Hey Guy's - Just FYI... With 130 hours in my Maule (tail-dragger):

- Combined Liability for Bodily: $1MM
- Injury & Property Damage: $100K
- Medical: $5K
- Aircraft Physical Damage: $70K
- Deductibles: $2.5K

Rob Glover (Falcon) gave me a quote (which I signed effective today) for annual premiums of $2,235. Seemed like a pretty good deal so I now have new insurance.

Jim

How many hours total time do you have, and do you have an instrument rating? There seems to be a lot of scatter in the range of insurance prices and I've been trying to figure out which data points have the biggest impact on the costs.

I'm a low time pilot. Rob told me that the key criteria that underwriters are looking at Maule specific time and the additional criteria is having more than 100 hours. Goofy thing is that the Maule coverage is cheaper than Cirrus, bonanza, 210, etc.

jaudette wrote:I'm a low time pilot. Rob told me that the key criteria that underwriters are looking at Maule specific time and the additional criteria is having more than 100 hours. Goofy thing is that the Maule coverage is cheaper than Cirrus, bonanza, 210, etc.

My experience was that Cirrus was half the price of Maule when I was shopping late last year. I was zero time TW and 300+ total time. When I get 50 hours tw and 500 tt then the Cirrus will be 35-40% less.

I didn't price Bonanza or 210, but my experience helping with our flying club is that the premium for our retractable gear plane (Arrow) isn't nearly enough to make it comparable to a tailwheel.

Agreed that the ones I spoke with wanted *maule* time, not just tw time. That wasn't an issue for me as I was starting at zero either way, but it was an issue for my CFI who barely met the in type requirements from a maule perspective (despite having hundreds of hours of tw time, hundreds of hours of glider time, thousands of hours of harrier time and thousands of hours of 737 time).

I have some Cirrus time. Rob quoted me 6k for a 2003 cirrus that I was looking at buying as a commuter plane. The insurance being so high caused me to pass on buying the plane. The reason is that they have a high incidence of being totaled and a higher incidence of fatalities.

Interestingly, I was also looking at 182rg's, 210's and he said the rates were going to be higher on those because of a rash of thefts (being stolen and taken to Mexico).

Jim

jaudette wrote:I have some Cirrus time. Rob quoted me 6k for a 2003 cirrus that I was looking at buying as a commuter plane. The insurance being so high caused me to pass on buying the plane. The reason is that they have a high incidence of being totaled and a higher incidence of fatalities.

Interestingly, I was also looking at 182rg's, 210's and he said the rates were going to be higher on those because of a rash of thefts (being stolen and taken to Mexico).

I haven't seen any 182rgs in Mexico, but I've seen a bunch of 210's. Interesting.

What was the hull value on the Cirrus?

The hull value was 125k. I already bought the hangar behind mine for an additional plane. I almost pulled the trigger on the cirrus and I'm glad I reached out to Rob. 6k would have been unbearable. He did tell me that a v35 with 70k would be 3k. I'm going to start looking closely at one of those.

Jim

jaudette wrote:The hull value was 125k. I already bought the hangar behind mine for an additional plane. I almost pulled the trigger on the cirrus and I'm glad I reached out to Rob. 6k would have been unbearable. He did tell me that a v35 with 70k would be 3k. I'm going to start looking closely at one of those.

Wow, that is high. As you say, it must be the percentage of total losses. Similar to the high cost of floatplane insurance. Too often the plane is a write off because it's sitting on the bottom of a lake.

I'll send you a PM with my insurance broker. They saved me tons on my maule. A thousand less than any other I spoke with and less than half that of Avemco. Given that ten year old cirrus are pretty reasonably priced, maybe it wouldn't hurt to see if they can get you an insurance rate that would make one possible.

Thanks Pal!

I've already shared this before but when I was looking at a maule I was quoted $2600/yr on 50k hull value with 0 maule time 300tt and 296TW.

whee wrote:I've already shared this before but when I was looking at a maule I was quoted $2600/yr on 50k hull value with 0 maule time 300tt and 296TW.

I ended up at 2700/yr on 120k hull value 0 maule, 0 tw, 300+tt

My training requirements were non-trivial. 20 or 25 hours dual (I forget which), 30 takeoff/landings, all with an instructor with 75 hours in type.

This worked out to be fine for my situation. I ended up with about 30 hours of dual and 50-60 t/l because I had my CFI come along on the ferry flight. If someone is already tw competent then these requirements might simply add cost without adding safety.

Maule insurance is all over the place on price. Different agents have different reasons why it is more than say a 180. The one thing they agree on is if you don't have over 500 hours in the Maule you will pay a premium.

I started in mine with 0 TW, 100TT. I was required to have 30 hr of dual instruction. The first year was $6500 It has gone down every year since. After 6 1/2 years Instrument rating, over 1200 in the Maule now I pay $1810.00 for 115K hull, $250.00 deductible.

G'Day

OregonMaule wrote:Maule insurance is all over the place on price.

Yeah, this is the real takeaway. Shop. My high bid was more than double my low bid. I sent the low bid policy to the high bid guy and he said "the only differences between their coverage and ours are minor and don't effect your plans. I can't recommend that you pay more for our policy."

I wound up at $1600/yr with zero Maule time, but 175 taildragger time and just over 1000 total time with an instrument rating. That provides $100k hull insurance, with a million in liability. I've picked up almost 50 hours of Maule time in the 45 days I've had this plane. It will be interesting to see if my rate drops next year...

Flyhound wrote:I wound up at $1600/yr with zero Maule time, but 175 taildragger time and just over 1000 total time with an instrument rating. That provides $100k hull insurance, with a million in liability. I've picked up almost 50 hours of Maule time in the 45 days I've had this plane. It will be interesting to see if my rate drops next year...

I recommend you be proactive and tell your insurer you're over 50/1000 when that happens and see when rate cuts come into play. Maybe you can save money sooner than waiting until the next enrollment period.

20 or 30 hours of dual. Wow. The agent I dealt with said 5 hours dual and didn't mention anything about the CFI needing a specific amount of maule time.

whee wrote:20 or 30 hours of dual. Wow. The agent I dealt with said 5 hours dual and didn't mention anything about the CFI needing a specific amount of maule time.

Yup, but your insurance was twice as expensive as mine. I think the policy I was quoted in your price range also had lower requirements.

Like I said before though, for my situation it was a non-issue. I needed that training anyway so the company and I were on the same page.

Hey Guy's - One other thing I forgot to add was recency of experience. I happen to have around 25 hours of time in the previous month (due to a couple of x-countries) which seemed to make a difference to the underwriters. Rob indicated that global gave me a 15% discount because of it. Not sure why.

I guess it might pay to fly a bunch in the weeks prior to getting quotes.

Jim