I haven’t flown my glider much in the last year and probably won’t be flying it again for many months. While that may not be ideal, it means I can spend less money by not paying for an annual inspection and can greatly reduce or eliminate the insurance costs. Or so I thought.

It just so happens that my insurance carrier emailed the other day to ask about renewing my policy (it’s that time of year). I explained that I probably wouldn’t be flying it and would probably let the policy lapse. The countered with an offer of “storage only” or “ground” coverage, which means that they’d still insure it for non-flight related damage.

Now gliders are kind of expensive to insure in the first place. The annual insurance bill is roughly the same as it is for our Cessna 182Q (which is worth twice as much as my glider). So I was looking forward to paying a lot less.

Wrong!

It turns out that moving to storage only coverage still costs roughly 67% (2/3rds) of what the full flight coverage is. I’m still trying to process that figure. That’s like State Farm Insurance telling me that if I agree to keep my car in the garage for a year, they’ll give me a 33% discount.

Apparently, (1) there is a lot of overhead in the insurance industry, and (2) they think I’m far more likely to encounter non-flying damage.

And, the best part is this… If I were to cancel coverage all together for the year, I’d have higher rates when I come back next year because of discounts I’ve accrued with them. “If you let this policy go and then come back later, the new policy offered will be about 15% higher in cost just due to the loss of those discounts.” Strangely, I thought those discounts were the result of earning additional ratings (like my Commercial) and gaining experience and flight time.

It’s no surprise that the first four letters of the insurance company most glider pilots use are “Cost”, huh?

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