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CFI Insurance

Asked by: 49518 views Flight Instructor, General Aviation

Suppose a CFI is interested in receiving training for an advanced rating in his personal airplane.  What insurance, if any, should be obtained by the CFI giving the instruction, assuming that the receiving CFI can and will be the PIC throughout the flights?  What are potential consequences of not having such insurance?  

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2 Answers



  1. Matthew Waugh on Oct 13, 2012

    The CFI giving instruction should take out insurance that covers the hull value of the aircraft they will be instructing in and “sufficient” liability insurance (“sufficient” depends on your circumstances, the more you got, the more you need). That insurance is almost certainly prohibitively expensive and it’s mostly the hull part that costs so much.

    So a better solution is for the CFI to be added to the owners policy as a “named insured” – and make sure that is how they are added. They should be added such that they get the same protection as the owner (if the owner is poor and the CFI is rich then you may need additional liability insurance but that’s cheap to buy).

    An alternative that’s almost as good is to have the owners insurance company issue you a “waiver of subrogation” saying that, in the event there is an incident/accident, they won’t come after you for their costs.

    Who is PIC is interesting for hangar flying, and the FAA will be interested, but the insurance company doesn’t care (and even the FAA has made statements like “an instructor providing instruction is de facto the PIC” – which is obviously rubbish, but….).

    What are the consequences? You lose everything in a multi-million dollar payment to owner of the plane (well their insurance company) and spend the rest of your life living on dog food you liberate from the trash container outside the dog compound.

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  2. Sam Dawson on Oct 16, 2012

    Look at some of the policies offered by CFI groups such as SAFE and NAFI.
    http://www.safepilots.org/

    http://www.nafinet.org/

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