Blogs

Good piece on the beginnings of a market to ensure drone operators, from DroneReport. Excerpts:

There is no federal requirement for aviation insurance, Miller explained, but people manage their personal risks by avoiding uninsured operations, and that includes those flying overhead. Aviation insurance policies, on the other hand, require compliance with itemized federal regulations that deal with airworthiness and pilot training. Because these requirements do not yet exist for drones, Miller had to establish his own when he wrote the first of several hundred drone policies two years ago.

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On average, Transport Risk insures one in 30 drone applicants. The company is not making money on any of them. But, he said, “It’s our money, and if we want to roll the dice on it, we will. There’s just so much being put into this, bringing capacity to the market developing claims adjusters, educating underwriters.”

His stringent selectivity also protects the seven insurance syndicates that back the policies. Most of them are in Europe, where thousands of drones are already flying. “We all want a safe, responsible industry,” he said, and bringing down an airliner, an EMS helicopter, or an ag spray plane “will not do good things for the future of UAVs…the American public will not put up with people being killed by machines. If it happens, we’re out of business.”