Life Supplement Coverage for Pilots
Life insurance is naturally very important to persons who fly airplanes or helicopters for either work or recreation. Although advances in aircraft technology, flight practices and pilot training have made traveling by air generally safer than riding in an automobile, accidents do happen and planes do crash. Many hundreds of American pilots and their passengers lose their lives or are seriously injured every year in horrific incidents. And although the total number of crashes has been on the decline, aerospace fatality rates in 2018 climbed to the highest levels in history.
Considering the inherit risks of their occupation or avocation of flying, pilots need to be insured with the same frequency if not more than the rest of us.
U.S. life insurance companies offer term and permanent solutions for most commercial, corporate and private aviators, yet the policies tend to be very expensive. Flat extras for aviation exposure commonly land in the $3.00 per thousand to $7.00 per thousand price range depending on the severity of the risk including the occupation and experience of the pilot. These premium loads, in conjunction with standard life insurance rates, can be financially taxing on anyone who flies for a living or in their spare time.
The most viable coverage alternative or life policy supplement is standalone accidental death insurance. Petersen International’s High-Limit Accident Plan is a simplified-issue term product designed to provide a death benefit in case of loss of life due to unnatural occurrences including aircraft incidents. The benefits platform is flexible and can be customized to cover a client 24 hours per day or only while piloting. The plan also offers dismemberment benefits which are extremely important as claims statistics indicate that many aeronautical accidents cause severe injury, but don’t always result in the death or immediate death of the insured person.
Regarding cost to the consumer, Petersen’s pilot AD&D rates fall mostly below life industry flat extras for private and professional pilots, and available benefit limits are the highest in the market – $50,000 to $50,000,000 per person.
Petersen International also has the rare ability to cover pilots in extra hazardous lines of work including agriculture, firefighting, law enforcement, construction, high-tension electrical work, religious missions and even intelligence/surveillance contractors working in Africa and the Middle East.
Contact our pilot insurance specialists at (800)345-8816 to learn about the full line of benefits we have available for professional and private aviators.