Insuring Helis?

[Ewan]

Good advice, but do read the exclusions carefully as, for example, theft from and unattended and probably unlocked car (battery charging in the back/under the bonnet etc.) are often excluded, as might be theft of something from your bench/flight-box while you are out on the flight line.

Good to have the cover though for the occasions that are not excluded.

Mark you are of course absolutely correct, if the items are unattended you may well not be covered.

A classic insurance claim that gets rejected is when someone starts their car in the morning and leaves it running to defrost whilst they pop back into the house to finish their coffee/breakfast whatever and then some scumbag nicks it the insurers tell them they had not taken reasonable precautions in stopping the vehicle from being nicked.

[tonystevens]

I know we often joke about such things around here and trust me I wish sometimes we could do more than just joke about it, but just in case anyone is ever seriously tempted to do it you need to consider the "Occupiers' Liability Act 1984".

Yes, in this country 'active defence' systems are rarely if ever legal sadly

Even in the case of someone committing a crime, you cannot lay down traps likely to cause injury

Yes if they are convicted and given a custodial sentence they will need the permission of the Court before they can sue you, but if you have actually wired up a door to the mains power supply you can expect the Court to grant their request ...

Hardly seems fair does it and we wonder why crime in general and theft in particular remains such a problem, you have to figure there would be a lot fewer thefts and certainly fewer repeat offenders if we could do something more 'damaging' about it.

Yeah dont worry i wont be rigging the handle.
Its so sad that if you defend your property and the criminal gets hurt YOU end up being the one that finds themself with a custodial sentence.
Lets just say they might be having a little accident

[R1stu]

I need to get insurance sorted. Ours ran out in August and they wanted almost £400 for the year for the insurance too. Not working decided against it. But I have a shed with over £5k worth of fishing tackle So need to sort soon. I think it cost me an extra £50 a year to insure that and it was covered whereever it was providing it wasnt stolen while fishing!!! to add tat it was £200. Also covered laptop and any individual item upto £1500.

Need to get some good insurance I think!

[LaurenceGough]

aye, nice fat security light and an obvious CCTV camera even if its fake

but personally theres no way i would leave helis stored outside. Too many temperature/moisture sensitive items in a heli.

Ade

+1111

Mine is covered under house insurance being pretty much the most expensive thing I own other than the car!

[Mylee]

Unfortunately, in a two bedroom house with me, wifey and little one - the garage is the only suitable place for heli storage....but the purpose built, temperature controlled cupboard works a treat!!

[moyesboy]

If you leave your car running to defrost, but you have locked it with a second key - then if a scroat smashes a window to get in and drives it away - would that be insured? Because by leaving it running you had left imobiliser/steering lock etc ineffective.

I know a lot of people that do this!

[mgjackson]

One of my colleagues has insurance that covers items outside the home for accidental damage and loss e.g. mobile phones. I wonder if this would cover accidental damage to models when they're crashed?

American Express did (presumably they still do, long time since I had an Amex) insurance on items bought on the card. There was even a tv advert where a lady got red wine spilt onto a dress....which is surely human error, like say, dumb-thumbing a scale Vario Turbine into the ground

[Skipper Billy]

Reminds me of the allegedly true story about an American guy who bought 6 very rare Churchill cigars at auction for 12000 dollars.

3 weeks later he contacted his insurers and claimed they had been destroyed in 6 separate fires - they refused to pay out claiming he had simply smoked them.

He sued them and won his case.

The insurance company then issued a counter writ for 6 cases of arson!

Only in America!!!