Of all the fixed costs of flying — paying for the aircraft, fuel, maintenance, and hangar space — there is one that frustrates most general aviation pilots: The cost of insurance.
Add on to that the feeling that no matter how many hours you have or ratings, premium prices just keep going up.
And, until now, there was really no way to know if your insurance premium is higher — or lower — than those of other pilots.
To combat that, in January 2025 ForeFlight introduced its Insurance Fair Price Tool, designed to bring transparency to an area of flying that has never been transparent.
“Insurance costs have increased in recent years, and many pilots don’t know if they’re getting a fair deal. This is a big step toward bringing more transparency to an outdated, inconsistent system,” said Tim Schuetze, CEO of ForeFlight.
The tool, which is free for all individual ForeFlight subscribers, uses anonymous insurance policy data shared by pilots, as well as each pilot’s own aircraft and flight experience, to show an expected premium range based on similar pilot profiles.
Pilots can clearly see where their policy falls within this “fair price” range and also view insights on contributing factors that could impact their premium, according to ForeFlight officials.
“We’ve worked with hundreds of aircraft owners for several months in developing this tool,” said Henrik Hansen, Chief Technology Officer at ForeFlight. “The feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. Pilots appreciate having a way to gain clarity on one of their biggest ongoing expenses.”
The idea for the new tool was born at ForeFlight’s headquarters.
“A lot of us are pilots and aircraft owners,” notes Connor Hailey, Senior Product Manager. “Like most pilots, we want to fly more so we are always looking for ways to reduce costs any time we can.”
Aviation insurance pricing is one of the most opaque financial aspects of aircraft ownership today, he says.
“You’ll see people who’ve had no claims history and increasing their number of hours every year and, yet, for some reason their rates keep going up,” Hailey says. “And so we thought that one way that we could potentially bring some transparency to the market is by creating, essentially, a Kelley Blue Book for aircraft owners insurance.”
Company officials hope that more pilots will upload their insurance information so the tool can continue to be refined.
“It’s in the same way that Kelley Blue Book or Glassdoor are more valuable,” Hailey says. “The more users who engage with the product and who share their information, the better.”
As the tool continues to be refined, Hailey adds that aircraft owners will have to upload their insurance policies each time they are renewed to ensure the most up-to-date information is available.
That’s because each time a pilot renews their insurance policy, there are updated flight hours, additional ratings, and more.
“The expectation, of course, is that over time your premium will go down,” Hailey says. “That’s not always the case, but each year, as users upload their policies and they continue to progress in their flying journeys, we’ll take that information, update it, and then feed that back into the model so that we can continue to refine the algorithm.”
When a pilot goes into their individual ForeFlight account online, they will see an average range of insurance premiums based on the number of hours they have, age, and claims history — most of the elements that go into quoting an actual policy, he explains.
“We try to put them on a scale with other pilots who share similar characteristics to them,” he continues.
In talking to customers, ForeFlight officials found that a number just feel “helplessness” when dealing with insurance companies.
“We’ve heard from customers about not being able to get coverage, or coverage being reduced, or premiums increasing by more than 50%,” Hailey says. “They feel that they’re doing everything right and their premiums just continue to go up year after year, despite getting additional ratings and additional hours.”
Having the Insurance Fair Price Tool gives some of the power back to pilots.
Hailey notes that one ForeFlight customer called the new tool a “weapon” to fight back against some of the opacity that exists in the insurance market.
“Obviously we’re excited to be able to provide at least some level of transparency into that process, that maybe if you go onto the Fair Price Tool and you’re seeing something that’s a little higher than expected, then you have an additional conversation with your broker,” he says. “Because at the end of the day, the broker is really the advocate on the aircraft owner’s behalf.”
Being armed with data from the Insurance Fair Price Tool during those conversations with your insurance broker can only help.
“Hopefully your broker can advocate for you in a way that if they can’t lower your premiums, at the very least you know what you might be able to do or work on in order to improve that in the future,” Hailey says.
For more information: ForeFlight.com or, if you are already a ForeFlight subcriber, Plan.ForeFlight.com/Insurance
