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What is the insurable value of my aircraft?

Insuring your aircraft is an important topic that rarely seems to come up on aviation blogs. And yet, finding an appropriate value is important as to high of a value will increase your premiums while to low of a value will leave you exposed to not getting the full value of your aircraft in the event there is a total lost.

However and as pointed out in a recent column posted on GlobalAir.com by Darryl Abbey, the senior vice president of Salem Five Aviation Services, determining the correct value of your aircraft is not to difficult. Nevertheless, it will take some time along with some research and analysis to make the right decision.

Darryl begins by noting that the Aircraft Blue Book and Vref are two very useful sources for helping to determine an aircraft’s initial value and from there its a matter of determining the value of various variables for your aircraft along with finding out what the current market is like for your aircraft. Coming up with an accurate value is also important because reputable insurance companies will not want to overvalue an aircraft nor with they want to undervalue one by more than 10% to 20% below the average value of similar aircraft.

Thus and if you are facing an insurance renewal in the near future, Darryl’s column is well worth reading.

Surprising facts about accidents involving Cirrus aircraft

For any reader who owns or flies a Cirrus, the latest issue of Cirrus Pilot, the membership magazine for the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), is a must read. In the issue, Cirrus owner and pilot Rick Beach has compiled years of knowledge and research into SR20/SR22 accidents to come up with a number of surprising conclusions as to what causes accidents involving Cirrus aircraft.

In fact and as Dave Hirschman recently noted in a post about the issue on the AOPA Pilot Blog, you might also be surprised to learn that:

“Only two pilots in a Cirrus fatal accident had less than 150 hours total time,” Beach said. “One of them was (the late New York Yankees pitcher) Cory Lidle, who had an instructor in the right seat during the accident.” (The other took place off the coast of France under unknown conditions.) Pilots with more than 400 hours total time accounted for 33 of 44 fatal Cirrus accidents where pilot experience was reported.

Moreover, Dave noted:

“All but one of the 37 probable causes determined by NTSB accident investigations lists pilot causes,” Beach found. Adverse weather was a factor in most Cirrus accidents, and weather-related accidents are most common in the October-through-March time frame….
…During the same period, there were 55 fatal Cirrus accidents where the airframe parachute wasn’t deployed. In examining those scenarios, Beach estimates more than half (30) had “a high or good probability of success if the pilot would have pulled the (parachute) handle.”

In other words, continuous learning and training, a more conservative take on the weather and not being afraid to pull the parachute in an emergency can greatly improve the odds of avoiding a fatal accident.

Beach’s report is a must read and can be downloaded for free from the COPA website by clicking here.

Engine failure: Now where do I land?

Experiencing an engine failure during a flight and having to make an emergency landing may not be something that pilots want to think about. Moreover, there are plenty of less than ideal situations that a pilot may find themselves in should they experience an engine failure.

Hence, Jason Schappert has created a short video and a poll on his blog where he asks readers to vote on what they believe to be the best landing spot: water, trees or a residential road. Now when you really think about it, all three choices have their pluses and minus. For example: a residential road may seem like a good option but what about all those power lines and parked cars?

Hence, where would you choose to land and why? Feel free to respond in the comments section and don’t forget to also vote in Jason’s poll and post your comments on his blog.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoQjOBcx6XU[/youtube]

Speaking fluent WAAS video series

Pilots based across the pond may want to check out the four part WAAS video series produced by the Flight Academy. However and in case you have not heard the term before, WAAS stands for “Wide Area Augmentation System” and its an air navigation system developed by the FAA in order to improve the Global Position System (GPS). The goal of WAAS is to improve the accuracy, integrity, and availability of GPS. Moreover, other regions around the world are also developing WAAS like systems.

Parts one, two, three and four have all been recently posted on the Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association website and are also available on Youtube. Warning: although the videos are very comprehensive, they are a little bit on the dry and technical side!

Fatal icing incident case study & last audio transmission

With winter and cold weather already here in Northern latitudes, its time to once again become concerned about icing. Hence, a post by John Fiscus on the Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association’s (COPA) blog is well worth reading. John mentions that a link has been posted in the in the Cirrus Flying forum containing one of the best summaries or case studies of an accident involving icing that he has seen (COPA members can view the summary here while non-COPA members can log in as a guest and view it here). The summary also contains a particularly spooky last audio transmission from the pilot who lost his life in the accident and John noted that:

Basically, the pilot (seemingly calmly) tells the controller that he’s icing up and going down. The thing that caught my attention was that he held his push-to-talk switch down for quite a while after he stopped talking, a sign that he was mentally locking up. I see that a lot in training when a pilot is overloaded. Anyway, during those last few seconds after he’s done talking but still transmitting you can hear the incredible speed of the airplane coming through his mic. They estimate he was coming down at over 5,000 feet per minute and his speed was well over the red line of 201 knots.

However, John concludes by saying that icing is completely avoidable. After all, we can all simply make the decision NOT to fly in potentially icy conditions. And if you are still not sure whether its safe to fly, listening to that last audio transmission will definitely help you in making a safe decision.

Practicing emergency landings the safe way

Practicing and preparing for an aviation emergency is always good but sometimes it can make pilots uncomfortable if its not carried out properly or in a safe manner. Moreover, emergency practice in the air can easily turn into a real emergency resulting in an accident.

However, Brian, the blogger behind Brian’s Flying Blog, recently practiced an emergency landing in preparation for his biennial flight review in a way that made him more comfortable than his previous emergency landing practice which had usually been in the middle of nowhere. This time around, the emergency field was a long airport runway. Hence and if something did go wrong, Brian would still be safe.

Brian also noted his favorite acronym (ALARMS) for an emergency land that is well worth repeating again here:

Airspeed (Best glide speed)
Landing Site (remember to look straight down for sites)
Air Restart (carb heat, throttle, mixture, primer, fuel tank switch and indicator, ignition L/R checks, etc)
Radio set (7700 on transponder, 121.5 if not talking on another frequency)
Mayday
Secure (Final flaps, then Electric off, fuel off, mixture off, tighten seat belts, crack the door)

Definitely good advice worth remembering.