Essential Things You Should Know on Accident Claim Solicitors
Robert was in an accident at his workplace and his injuries demanded a visit to the hospital. He also paid for all the expenses. You may think he did the right thing but any accident claim solicitor will tell you that was a stupid decision. Ideally, Robert’s employers should have paid the medical bills and related expenditures. Even if Robert paid the expenses, he should have filed an accident compensation claim for reimbursement.
The benefits of accident compensation claims that are sensibly and honestly filed are immense. If an accident happens at work, it is the employer’s responsibility to compensate the employee. If an employee caused an accident leading to injuries, employers can obtain insurance coverage of the accidents at work.
In the event of an accident, accident claim solicitors are the best people to offer advice, especially to employees who fear losing their job due to the accident. If the injured employee is responsible for the accident, the possibility of filing an accident compensation claim has to be checked with an accident claim solicitor.
Criteria for Selecting a Good Accident Claim Solicitor
Here are some key criteria for selecting your accident claim solicitor. A good accident claim solicitor will
• Be an expert in the specific field of your interest, namely handling accident compensation claim cases
• Have proof of his relevant experience
• Have a clear vision for the case, and be able to guide you effortlessly through the proceedings, update you about your chances of winning the claims, etc.,
• Guarantee that you get to keep the complete accident compensation amount instead of taking a huge commission, under the pretext of a ‘no-win no-fee’ clause
• Be able to ensure you coverage of legal and other costs if the accident claim is unable to come through
• Brief you about the basics of filing an accident compensation claims, for example, claims can be filed for accidents caused by others who are 18 years and above, filed anytime before three years from the date of the accident, wherein the injured have incurred huge expenses or lost lots of money, have had their standard of living compromised as a result of the accident, etc.
French state to pay Air France and insurance companies for dead hedgehog on runway
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An administrative court has ordered the French state to pay EUR3.2m to Air France and five insurance companies for failure to clear a runway.
A dozen seagulls were pulled into an Air France aircraft’s turbine and made the aircraft skid to an emergency stop in March 1998. The seagulls were eating a dead hedgehog on the runway at Marseille’s airport.
The court ruled that the state-employed airport staff member who was responsible for clearing the runway of dead animals had failed to carry out his duties, The Associated Press reported.
Aircraft Carrier Personnel Mishap and Injury Rates during Deployment
This cohort study assessed all reported injuries experienced by the personnel of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier during two consecutive 6-month deployments. These nondisease injury cases were collected by the ship’s Safety Department from ship’s Medical Department reports and showed 291 total injuries (3.05 injuries per 10,000 person-days) and 412 total injuries (4.39 injuries per 10,000 person-days) among 5,101 personnel during two cruises, slightly higher than the recordable mishap rate for general U.S. industry (which uses a different metric). Junior personnel experienced one-half of the mishaps but represented only 31% of the manpower. Slips, trips, and falls were the most common causes of accidents on the ship, similar to general industry. The incidence densities and causes reported should be similar to and representative of those for other large deck ships in the U.S. Navy and can be used in developing risk-reduction strategies for targeted populations, to meet the Secretary of Defense requirement to reduce injuries by 50% in the next 2 years.
Introduction
Aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy are the largest warships in the world.1 With their embarked air wings, carriers are deployed worldwide to serve a variety of roles in peacetime and during global crises. Carriers are manned by >5,000 personnel, with the exact complement depending on the class of ship and specific employment. There are hundreds of details and jobs associated with operating this small city 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, at sea, such as food preparation, production of electricity, steam, and fresh water, propulsion and auxiliary systems, and operation and maintenance of all of the weapons, communications, navigation, and assorted systems, as well as the numerous complex aspects of flight operations.
In general U.S. industry, it is estimated that >6 million workers are injured each year, with insurance, health care, lost time, and worker replacement and retraining costs of $121 billion.2 The military has the potential for similar injuries but has a much smaller manpower pool to draw from and a longer logistics tail during deployments. Military training, recreational, and work injuries are the most significant source of loss of manpower, hospitalizations, and reduction of readiness.3
During the period of 1980-1993, active duty Navy personnel suffered 4,607 deaths attributable to unintentional injuries (59.4 deaths per 100,000 population), with an all-cause mortality total of 7,485 (96.5 deaths per 100,000 population). Unintentional injuries include disease, illness, suicide, homicide, deaths attributable to hostile action, and miscellaneous causes.4 As of October 3, 2003, there were 383,890 active duty personnel in the Navy, i.e., 55,317 officers and 328,573 enlisted personnel. There were also 185,550 Navy Department civilian employees and 152,464 Ready Reservists.5 The average age of the enlisted personnel in the Navy is 27 years (51% of all enlisted personnel and 44% of the total force are below this age). On average, officers are approximately one decade older (35 years of age) than enlisted personnel6 (D. Thao, unpublished data).
This is an analysis of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier’s mishap and injury database covering two 6-month deployments to the same general operating areas, in 1999 and 2001. The purpose was to determine trends in injury types, causes, and basic demographic features. The information described here may assist U.S. Navy leaders and safety managers in developing risk-reduction strategies. The Secretary of Defense set an ambitious goal for all U.S. military services to reduce all-cause mishap and accident rates by 50% in the next 2 years.7 President George W. Bush followed up the Department of Defense goal with a similar goal for all U.S. federal agencies to reduce accidents and injuries by implementing the Safety, Health, and Return-to-Employment initiative. President Bush established four specific workplace goals, each of which is relevant to this research and discussion, namely, lower injury/illness rates, lower lost-time injury/illness rates, timely reporting of injuries/illnesses, and fewer lost days from work injuries and illnesses.8
After establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the U.S. military adopted many safety and injury prevention programs similar to those of the civilian workforce. Several U.S. presidential executive orders later broadened the requirements for the military to more fully comply with all aspects of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The Navy Occupational Safety and Health Program does include numerous points that are unique to the Navy operational environment.9 The U.S. Naval Safety Center is charged with overall safety program oversight for the Navy.10 The Safety Center wrote specific program instructions for the Navy, including ashore (OPNAV5100.23F) and afloat (OPNAV5100.19D, CH-1) Navy Occupational Safety and Health Program manuals.9
New U.S. Naval Safety Center reporting criteria that are not reflected in this study went into effect in October 2002, requiring the reporting of all injuries that cause ?1 lost workdays.9 Until the start of 2003, most injuries were never reported or recorded off ship unless they met certain criteria, as defined by the Naval Safety Center. Direct comparison of the incidence densities of total injuries between ships is impossible even today, because of the lack of a central reporting repository that tracks all injuries, including non-lost time cases. In the past, direct comparisons were normally made only for reportable categories (e.g., class A mishap fatality rates).11
So, what’s the difference between aircraft time sharing and fractional ownership?
Most people are familiar with time sharing in the real estate context. You purchase an undivided interest in a condo in Maul that allows you to use it for a specific week or two out of the year. Real estate time sharing has become increasingly popular as an investment vehicle as recreation property values continue to appreciate. Additionally, as an owner of a real estate time share, you can trade your week or two in Maul for an equal amount at another location by participating in a time sharing swap program. Pretty cool-So does aircraft time sharing mean the same thing?
Actually, when people speak of buying a “time share” in an aircraft they are usually referring to what is commonly known as a fractional program, such as NetJets, CitationShares, Flex Jet or Flight Options. With a fractional program, you buy an undivided interest in an aircraft, typically a 1/16, 1/8 or 1/4 interest. The ownership of a fractional interest in an aircraft entitles the owner to a specified number of hours per year (based on 800 max hours for the airplane per year). So for example, if you buy a 1/16 interest that would entitle you to use your aircraft for 50 hours per year. With the purchase of a fractional interest in an aircraft, the owner pays an acquisition cost (which is approximate price for the aircraft multiplied by the fraction purchased) and gets added to the title on the aircraft at the FAA registry.
With up to 16 different owners per plane, what happens if everyone wants the plane on Thanksgiving? Luckily, the fractional companies provide and manage interchange programs that allow owners to trade their time on their aircraft into a common pool and to use a corresponding amount of time on available aircraft that are part of the interchange pool. In this way, unless every owner in every plane wants to use the aircraft on Thanksgiving most if not all of the owners will be accommodated.
As in the real estate time sharing context (where owners delegate maintenance, cleaning, utilities, etc. to the time sharing company), aircraft fractional owners delegate all aircraft management responsibilities to the fractional program operator. This means that the fractional program operator, NeLJets for example, provides flight crew management, trip scheduling, ground support, catering, ground transportation, and all maintenance on the aircraft. The owner’s responsibility is to pay a monthly management fee and an hourly occupied hourly fee for each hour that a program aircraft is used by the owner. Since a fractional interest is an owned asset, it can be depreciated it if it is used in the owner’s business. There are limitations to the deduction where there is personal use of the aircraft interest by the owner or his or her guests so careful tax planning in advance is imperative. Further, since buying a fractional interest in an aircraft is, for many people, a material transaction some due diligence on the fractional company as well as legal and tax planning for the ownership structure is in order, but that’s a whole other topic.
Now back to the “time sharing” issue–so, is there such an animal as aircraft time sharing? Actually, there is. But it’s nothing like real estate time sharing or fractional interest ownership of aircraft.
Time sharing an airplane is defined by the FAA as an “arrangement whereby a person leases his airplane with flight crew to another person, and no charge is made for the flights I conducted” other than reimbursement of certain permitted charges. The reason for the limitation on reimbursement is that the FAA considers any carriage of persons or property for compensation to be a commercial operation requiring the provider to be properly certificated by the FAA. This means that you can’t hire your friend’s aircraft with crew to fly you to Tahoe and pay a market-price hourly fee, unless your friend is a charter operator in possession of an FAA air carrier certificate. But what if your friend wants to let you use his plane with crew and you just reimburse him for fuel, catering and some other incidentals? That’s where time sharing comes in.
Recognizing that owners may want to provide transportation to their affiliates or friends and will want to be reimbursed for its use, the FAA permits an owner to lease out its aircraft, subject to certain limitations on aircraft size, citizenship and company structure, and to be reimbursed for an amount no greater than two times the fuel, oil, lubricants and other additives; plus any travel expenses of the crew, hangar and tie-down costs away from the aircraft’s base of operation, insurance obtained for the specific flight, landing fees and similar assessments, customs and similar fees, catering, ground transportation and flight planning and weather contract services. As long as the reimbursement is no greater than the above permitted amount (and provided that none of the limitations on aircraft size, citizenship and company structure apply), then the carriage qualifies for time sharing treatment as long as the parties enter into a proper time sharing agreement.
Capacity returns: with cargo insurance capacity now plentiful, buyers are beginning to look at the fine print in their contracts, from concealed-losses clauses to so-called delay coverage
It’s been four years since the aviation markets plunged, along with the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and insurance capacity for air freight is available once again, for a reasonable price, of course. The mad scramble to find fair coverage is over. And that means actuaries and underwriters have a little more time on their hands to look more closely at agreements to make sure that–well–insurance carriers are carrying their load.
One area that is gaining significant attention is coverage for concealed losses or theft of cargo, says Patrick J. Murphy, managing director, New York Marine & Energy Division, at Marsh Inc.
Aircraft leasing company flying into rough skies
The legal and financial troubles that have engulfed American International Group Inc. have trickled down to the insurance giant’s prosperous Century City-based aircraft finance unit, the No. 1 player in aircraft leasing.
AIG’s International Lease Finance Corp. unit is expected to have a tough time navigating Wall Street’s fickle credit markets due to the accounting improprieties uncovered after the departure of AIG’s former chief executive, Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg.
In the past few weeks, every major credit ratings agency has downgraded AIG, affecting some $26 billion of the company’s senior debt. Last month, Fitch Ratings put International Lease Finance on “ratings watch negative,” after AIG delayed the filing of its annual report, while Standard & Poor’s placed the aircraft lease company’s corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings on “CreditWatch negative,” citing AIG’s negative ratings.
In the short-term, the credit downgrades will make borrowing more expensive for International Lease Finance, which was founded in 1983 by Steven UdvarHazy, the son of Hungarian immigrants, and his two partners–the father-son team of Leslie Gonda, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, and his son, Louis Gonda.
International Lease Finance, which owns a fleet of more than 800 commercial aircraft, has relied heavily on its relationship with AIG and the clout the insurer once brought to the capital markets. That alliance helped International Lease Finance leapfrog ahead of its closest competitor in revenues, General Electric Co.’s GE Capital Aviation Services (though the GE unit leases more planes worldwide). The two companies also have different strengths: International Lease Finance excels in the foreign market, while GE’s unit dominates the domestic sector.
While analysts and government regulators are only beginning to pick apart the complex interactions between AIG and its various financial and insurance units, questions have been raised about transactions between International Lease Finance and General Re Co., the reinsurance unit of Berkshire Hathaway, which is run by billionaire Warren Buffett.
The New York Times. citing an unidentified senior executive of AIG, reported last month that International Lease Finance purchased an insurance policy from General Re that had the effect of reducing International Lease Finance’s debt by hundreds of millions of dollars while also guaranteeing to General Re that it would not incur any losses on the insurance.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and other government regulators are looking closely at insurance transactions to see whether they transfer risk: if the seller of the insurance does not incur risk and the transaction simply masks a financial problem for the buyer, it is not considered a legitimate insurance deal.
Last week. the FBI said it has been looking for nearly a year into problems of accounting and other corporate fraud schemes at insurers.
International Lease Finance officials were traveling last week and were not available for comment. Officials from AIG and General Re did not return telephone calls for comment.
AIRCRAFT AND AVIATION INSURANCE
With nearly 236,000 private pilots in the country, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there is a good chance that agents will receive a request for some type of aviation insurance, since aircraft liability is excluded under the CGL form. Because this is a highly specialized area, most of the insurers that provide coverage do so through wholesalers. A list of specialists in aircraft and aircraft related coverages are available in The Insurance Marketplace, published by The Rough Notes Company. The Insurance Marketplace is also available online at www.insuranceniarketplace.com.
Aircraft insurance combines both the property insurance for the hull and liability coverage for bodily injury and property damage arising out of the ownership or use of the insurance aircraft.
Aviation insurance includes the operation of aircraft owned and used, involving hulls, liability, passenger liability, airport, and hangarkeeper’s liability.
There is no standardized aircraft policy but there are similar coverages provided by insurers that specialize in this coverage. Pleasure, business, and commercial aircraft policies all consist of physical damage to the aircraft, bodily injury (to passengers and others), property damage (to property of passengers and others), and medical payments (for the insured and passengers). Business and pleasure use are often combined. Commercial use is separate.
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Business and pleasure use involves using an aircraft as a mode of transportation or entertainment for the owner. Generally, a risk is evaluated by using such factors as pilot qualifications, aircraft used, the type and value of the aircraft, and any other extensions of standard coverages. Commercial use normally includes leasing, renting, servicing or some other activity that involves making an income from the use of an aircraft.
There are four major classes of aircraft owners/operators:
Business and Pleasure operators-This category consists of individuals, businesses or corporations that own and operate aircraft for both business and pleasure. However, they usually do not employ professional, full-time pilots. When a business owns or operates aircraft, often the president or a chief executive officer is the principal pilot.
Industrial Aid operators-Typically refers to corporations which own aircraft and employ full time, highly-skilled professional pilots to fly them.
Fixed Base Operators (FBOs)-These are airport-based businesses which own, operate, buy, sell, rent, and lease aircraft. They also provide a variety of aviation-related services including fueling, repairs, flight instruction, etc.
Flying Clubs-These are nonprofit organizations composed of at least three individuals who jointly own and operate all aircraft, but strictly for pleasure use.
A pilot can be the owner of the aircraft or can be an employee of the person or organization that owns the insured aircraft. The pilot must meet the FAA criteria for operating the type of aircraft being insured.
Generally, a pilot must have a regular physical, have completed flight instruction and pass licensing exams. Insurance can be purchased when a pilot is still considered a student pilot, but the student pilot criteria must be followed.
Coverage can be purchased even when no aircraft is owned. Aircraft can be rented with or without pilots under long- and short-term arrangements. Pilots who operate aircraft that they rent or borrow have a serious liability exposure that is excluded by the typical aviation policy. A non-owned aircraft policy covers these renters or borrowers for their liability for bodily injury or property damage caused by the insured pilot. However, the policy does not cover damage to the aircraft being operated by the insured since that coverage should be handled by the owner’s policy.
Any commercial ventures with premises and/or product-completed operations that are directly related to the aircraft industry are eligible for aviation insurance coverage. Contractual and products liability coverage can be included in such a policy.
Airport operators that own and rent planes to pilots (including student pilots) need hull and liability coverage. In most instances, financial institutions finance the sales of aircraft. Banks and other lenders need physical damage coverage in order to protect their insurable interest in aircraft covered by their loans. There are many other types of coverage available to respond to different aviation needs. The agent or broker should carefully survey all of a prospect’s exposures before submitting an application.
Please note that this is only an overview of this subject. A more detailed discussion may be found in the PF&M Analysis from The Rough Notes Company.
Agency OnLine subscribers, please refer to PF&M sections 330.4-2, for more in-depth discussion on Aircraft Coverage Analysis; 330.6-1, for an analysis of an Aviation General Liability Policy; or 330.5-1 to review common underwriting considerations.
Sky’s the liability limit: using personal aircraft for business purposes saves time but exposes an employer to soaring liability and higher insurance costs, many risk managers say
Each day millions of middle managers scurry to airports, board commercial jets and fly off on business. Thousands of others, instead of boarding a commercial aircraft, fly their own plane for business. Or, they sometimes rent.
As part of the general aviation sector, which numbers about 211,000 airplanes carrying 166 million passengers per year, employee pilots can easily and safely put themselves in the right place at the right time.
These employees fly single-engine, piston-powered airplanes to management meetings, inspect factories or projects, call on customers, suppliers, dealers, distributors, and deliver goods and services.
Most employee business flying covers vast regions stretching over many states, often hundreds of miles of the employee’s home base. Flying their own planes enable key employees to have point-to-point access to more than 19,000 public and private airports and heliports, often conveniently located near a company facility. Commercial airlines, however, serve only 550 larger airports.
Even considering that commercial jets fly at close to 500 mph, and most general aviation planes rarely go above 200 mph, the majority of business trips can take less time to complete with general aviation than using commercial air carriers because of the convenience of more direct flights and easier accessibility to final destinations.
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Business travelers on commercial airlines have to get to a major airport, clear security, possibly make connecting flights and waste time in takeoff or landing delays, rent a car, and then drive an hour or more to the destination. And after the meeting is over, reverse the trip home, or stay over and return the next day, an added expense. Without being tied to a fixed airline schedule, employees with their own planes can visit several customers or business locations in one day and be home at night.
According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, general aviation’s greatest role in the U.S. economy is its ability to enhance the profitability and competitive strength of U.S. businesses and industries.
Employers who take advantage of the speed and flexibility offered by general aviation, according to the A.O.P.A., perform better than businesses that rely solely upon commercial airlines for travel. The majority of businesses where employees fly their own or a rented plane are small to midsized. Fortune 500 companies, if they have a corporate aircraft fleet, employ or hire professional full-time pilots. There is no reliable estimate of how many employees fly their own or rented planes for their organizations.
John Goble, president of Sectra North America Inc., says, “Often our customers are not always located in large metropolitan areas so we fly into smaller airports to make service and sales calls, generally, to take care of customers.” Sectra supplies radiology image management systems to hospitals and clinics.
Depending on the season and the weather, he flies once, sometimes two or three times a week. Based in Shelton, Conn., he flies mostly in the Northeastern region of the United States.
“There is a great advantage to flying a private plane rather than using commercial airlines,” he says. “For example, we have several customers in Rochester, N.Y. For us to get to Rochester by commercial jet would mean going to LaGuardia and flying to Rochester at a cost of $ 700 or $800 per ticket. Since there are only three or four flights a day to and from that city, we are eager to get done and back to the airport. With our own aircraft we can leave when we want, even bring along one or two engineers, which makes it very cost effective. The cost of flying my plane for four hours is $500 to $600.”
INCREASING LIABILITY
Though the advantages of having employees fly their own planes or rented ones are convincing to some, many risk managers feel allowing this practice opens a company to more liability and higher insurance costs. Injury or death of an employee while flying his plane on company business would normally be excluded from a company’s travel accident policy and group life insurance program. Would a hold harmless and indemnity agreement with a waiver of claims for workers’ compensation and health insurance be valid if there was an accident? What would the company’s liability be for injury to a nonemployee in an employee’s plane on business?
Kenneth Breyley, director of risk management, Omnova Solutions Inc, located in Fairlawn, Ohio, says the company does not permit employees to fly their own or rented planes on company business.
“I have coverage just in ease we hire a charter aircraft and the charter company doesn’t have coverage, or it is less than we want to protect us,” he says. “By design we want to protect ourselves.” He remembered one employee who had his own plane and flew a trip or two on company business without telling anyone. Once the controller found out, “that person was stopped practically in midair.”
Dubai Aerospace may win bid for Singapore Airline unit SALE
Dubai Aerospace Enterprise could win the bid to buy Singapore Airline Ltd’s 35.5 pct owned associate Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise (SALE), the Business Times reported, citing sources close to the deal.
SALE is estimated to be worth about 600 mln usd, although the final bidding price is believed to be
above 1 bln, according to the report.
Other bidders for the company are Bank of China, Standard Chartered Bank and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp, the Business Times said.
Earlier, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted Sean Lee, a spokesman for SALE, as saying that the company is in the process of receiving bids and that ‘there could be a transaction by the end of the first quarter next year.’
AIRLINES INSURANCE
Growth in outsourcing of aerospace engineering and design is attributed to the ‘offset clause’, which says that aircraft makers supplying to Indian Airlines must source products And services from here.
The aviation boom in the country has triggered off a wave of aerospace engineering and design services to be outsourced to India.
The kind of high-end engineering design services, handled earlier by public sector units like Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), are now being done by companies such as Plexion Technologies, QuEST, Infotech Enterprises and Geometric Software.
Experts attribute the growth in outsourcing of aerospace engineering and design to the ‘offset clause’ mandated by the government, whereby aircraft makers like Boeing and Airbus, when supplying aircraft to Indian companies should also source products and services from here.
The global aerospace sector witnessed a lull after the twin towers attack in the US in 2003. After the lull the market is now witnessing growth, driven primarily by markets like India and China who have been placing unprecedented orders for aircraft, industry analysts point out.
“Aircraft makers like Airbus and Boeing are coming out with new designs and models. There are no custom designs for aircraft as every aircraft has to be designed according to specifications provided by the carriers. So the amount of work to be done is also huge. The value of outsourced work being done by Indian companies in this space is around $1bn. We expect this to go up 3-5 times in the next 5 years,†says Aravind Melligeri, president, Quality Engineering & Software Technologies (QuEST).
While the value of potential business to be outsourced many not be as big as automotive engineering services, the number of players are less, leaving them with a huge chunk of the pie.
A few companies are also moving up the value chain by manufacturing the designed components. “Cost advantage of manufacturing the components in India is one reason. What is also important is the need to subject the products to different tests, which the product designers will be well equipped to do,†asserts Hemant Luthra, president, Mahindra Systems and Automotive Technologies (MSAT).