Warbird Information Exchange

You folks have no idea of how suggestable to outside 'interests' the King County Council is, I listen to them on local news broadcasts and am surprised any of them can even stand as none seems to have a spine and all act like they came from Gary Larson's FAR SIDE cartoon 'boneless Chicken Ranch'. The bamboo electorate, bend whenever a breeze comes up.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

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“Knowing what’s right, doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”

Not the first airport to do this. There was the same issue out east a few years ago, Philly maybe?

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Best Regards;
Chuck Giese --- Volunteer helping to restore B-17G 44-85734 "Liberty Belle".

Maybe I can go back and dig up the emails I exchanged with the BFI airport manager in 2010 who didn't want to authorize a couple of T-38s landing there. That ought to add some fuel to the fire...the MoF was pretty happy at that decision.

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I could understand this if you were going to put on an airshow with stunt flying, and all kinds of stuff. But what the heck is the sense in jacking the insurance for B-17 rides? DO they require this inflated insurance for business jets as well?

I agree with the comments August is stating, but substitute B-17 and replace it with Citation. How did anything change?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

The increase is the insurance requirement by King County is the reason the CAF's Sentimental Journey will not be visiting the Seattle Museum of Flight in July. Halfway through the process of signing agreements with the County, the insurance required was raised from 5 to 15 million. The B-17 was lumped in with commercial airlines.

The Museum itself was extremely supportive of the efforts of the Collings Foundation and CAF coming into Boeing Field, but the King County bureaucracy managed to over-power common sense.

B-17G Sally B needs USD 120.000.000 insurance coverage and is NOT allowed to do rides to generate income!!!
See http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=60&pagetype=65&appid=1&mode=insurance&fullregmark=BEDF

Please go to http://www.sallyb.org.uk

This doesn't sound like the "nanny state." It sounds like a county official who probably has too much on his plate and the easiest way to clear this particular item is not to have it at all. That is, "make it too expensive for these old plane gnats and they will go away and I can focus on the stuff I really give a sh1t about." Mission accomplished.

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“Knowing what’s right, doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”

August, if there is justification for suddenly (as in within the last 6 months) raising the rate 300%, then the County Risk Manager can substantiate it. Problem is, I see no evidence they did, and at least according to the Collings foundation refused to give any reason other than it's what the commercial airlines (who operate much larger and energetic equipment as far as impact goes) pay. Risk Management is only Risk Management when you can prove the risk is there. The whole idea of Risk Management is to quantify risks and take the "feeling" out of it. Just because they may "feel" it's dangerous doesn't mean it is, and thus why you have to do Risk Analysis.

Also, the INSURANCE COMPANIES do quite extensive risk analysis when they create these policies for the airplanes. They won't cover an airplane unless the analysis makes financial sense to them. That's a lot of why the CAF's insurance costs have gone up so much in recent years and why everyone complains so much about ANUAC. As it is, the GOVERNMENT of a locality should defer to the INSURANCE COMPANY who are professional risk analysts on what the risk and liability is, not make it up on the fly or lump one group in with another for convenience. This is part of the problem aviation as a whole has - many local governments don't care about aviation PERIOD. They'd rather see everyone walk or drive (and thus be at greater risk of injury or death) than fly because they "feel" that it's riskier, regardless of the proof otherwise.

What everyone fails to see is, when the King County Council and the the Seattle City Council finally become so self conflicted that they lock up tight in a human gordian knot, then they all plan on running for Congress as a group.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

And BTW, some do. Lancaster, TX, wanted to have an airshow for years. Problem is that when the City Manager and Airport Board went to the Insurance Company for coverage, they were told the minimum policy would cost the city (of ~30,000) $500,000 to purchase. Now, I may think they could find the money if they wanted to, but for them, the priority for an airshow isn't high enough. But they're also not trying to run people off by telling them they need a policy that no insurance company will write because there's no justification for the amount.

CAPFlyer, I defer to you on the local situation, which I know nothing about. I do want to raise a question about this claim, which I also heard when Sally B was having its insurance difficulties a few years ago, that the authorities are treating them the same as a commercial airline. What does this really mean? I realize that the rhetoric is intended to make us think, "How ridiculous to treat a B-17 the same as an A-320," but can it be true that, for example, JetBlue only has $15 million of coverage to draw on if one of its Airbuses plows into a suburb near Sea-Tac? That would surprise me. So exactly what parity between the bombers and commercial airlines is being claimed? If the $15 million is what would be required of, say, a feeder airline that operates a couple of Dash-8s between Seattle and Portland, well, that doesn't sound quite so irrational as the two operations would be pretty comparable from a risk perspective, although of course their operational economics are very different in a way that makes the coverage much more difficult for the experience-flight outfit to afford.

August

I was stationed in England during the Sally B tax debacle. From what I understood from the crew (and from what I remember from 5 or 6 years ago!) the crux of the issue is the way that the EU has insurance companies assess rates for aircraft. Commercial aircraft (airliners) are assessed based on their maximum gross weight and charged accordingly. The EU deemed that Sally B should also be assessed on the maximum gross weight-of a FULLY LOADED B-17G WITH ALL CREW, WEAPONS and ARMAMENT. Needless to say, Sally B doesn't fly out and bomb Berlin much anymore and operates at a significantly lower weight than a wartime B-17. If I am not mistaken, their rates were about tripled-I don't remember the actual cost. They have to fight the insurance battle every year, and are mostly privately funded.

As I said, this is from what I remember talking with Ms. Sallingboe about at Duxford a couple of times. If you ever have a chance to meet her, she is a very special person! Nice enough to chat with a goofy old airplane fan anyway.

Others may have different information, or know something I don't

JMC

Nothing new here. It's happened to the railroad prevervation field years ago. There are steam locomotives that are fully capable of operation but haven't turned a wheel under power in a long time because the operators can't afford the insurance coverages the railroads they could run on demand before being allowed to take to their main line.
In a way it's a smiliar issue to this one. A railroad locomotive operator usually doesn't own the railroad they run on, just like most warbird operators don't own the airports they land on.
I'm just surprised it took this long for the same issue to creep into warbirds.
Still, the MoF has a lot of very politically well-connected and financed backers. As I've posted earlier, the museum display focus isn't apparently on warplanes right now, but these fly-ins are very high profile and it makes the museum look bad that a B-17 can't roll right up to their ramp. I'd like to think that this loss of exposure might lead to something in this case.

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)