dera

Exactly. one accident could easily wipe out half the balance sheet of any airline. Health insurance is somewhat controllable cost and is easy to self insure given a large enough of a pool, but for liability, no way.

fcoolaiddrinker

Pretty sure Alaska Ltd is self insured if I recall. Anyhow had a friend lose an engine in a A-319. While running the ecam it told him to shut the other engine down. When discussing it with Airbus engineering on the ground they mentioned that it was a software anomaly that has a 1/250 million chance of happening. Somewhere in that neighborhood. We can’t even get people to accept a vaccine with similar odds. Sorry had to throw that in for the anti vaxers. I just don’t see it happening anytime soon because of issues like this.

Gone Flying

I have heard from other places that at least one of the big 3 is self insured for hull losses.

TransWorld

What about passenger lawsuits and settlements? A hull loss would be small dollar amounts.

Gone Flying

honestly I’m not sure, and it was awhile ago (5-10 years)

but if I’m not mistaken, you can only sue the responsible party for negligence. Wouldn’t that be the manufacturer?

fcoolaiddrinker

Theres federal limits on most of that. Unless gross negligence is proven.

dera

Must be Delta, I know for a fact United and AA are not.

jumppilot

The final 10% is what’s going to table this proposal.

Scenario - Single Pilot A is avoiding weather, aircraft gets struck by lightening and Pilot A simultaneously has a stroke. Pilot B is still sleeping. Aircraft loses FMCs while Pilot B is in REM. Seconds count.

Scenario - Pilot A is alone at the controls, lost in thought about his divorce. Pushes forward and pulls circuit breakers to prevent recovery by the eventual return of Pilot B (who is still in REM sleep.)

The scenarios are crazy, but they have happened and need to be planned for by people who actually make regulatory decisions and don’t just love smelling their own farts because their latest Tesla is so cool.

And if this does come to pass in the next few years, the first accident directly attributed to this will shelve the program. So what airline executive and/or government bureaucrat would sign off on this?

There are so many decisions and technology improvements that need to be implement that this has zero chance of happening anytime soon. Sure, this may happen eventually - don’t bet against human progress - but you all are getting too worked up over nothing.

rickair7777

Yeah it's the last little bit that's always the hardest in bleeding edge technology.

People are tolerant of human error, and keep buying tickets after pilot-error plane crsahes but they won't be at all tolerant of accidents induced by cost-saving reductions in flight crew... one of those, or even a near miss, and it would get shut down. Look at the max... easy to hate on MCAS because it was a cost-cutting measure, implemented in a cost-cutting manner, not an honest human mistake.

rickair7777

Not aware of any airlines, for the obvious reason that potential liability is so high. Just pointing that insurance options are more flexible for big companies as opposed to us individuals.