To what Dan said above, deciding on insurance issues is a difficult thing. It’s the type of thing that should be handled at the BOD level. It’s not something that should be looked at as a popularity contest and be voted on by the membership in general. Insurance policies are very complicated and it’s not reasonable to expect that we could properly educate all the members so that they could collectively make the right decision.

I’m not an insurance expert by any means, my background is in business and accounting. I’ve read both policies cover to cover, the RRRG policy and the NEXT policy, several times. I don’t recommend that anyone try to do this without wearing a helmet, because it makes your brain want to explode.

The best way to describe the RRRG policy is that it is like a plate of spaghetti. It’s a list of coverages and a long list of exclusions from coverage, which is typical for insurance, but when you read through the exclusions it’s easy to think of ways that they could deny coverage for accidents that happen on club property.

The NEXT policy also has coverages and exclusions, but it is much more rational and reasonable and the policy is much easier to make sense of.

The claim made by Jamie that the “Schedule of Project or Operation” essentially eliminates coverage for HG and PG accidents is just not a correct reading of this policy. But she and I have already debated this and haven’t been able to come to an agreement on this issue. Both Jai Pal and myself have called NEXT to discuss the policy with their personnel and we’ve been assured that we do have the insurance that we think we have. And we know that the policy has been submitted to our landlord, the DWR, and they have reviewed and approved it.

As to the complaint that we’re no longer covering the CCR, well that’s just the nature of property insurance. They have a property that is separate from ours. Their property is obviously different and more complicated than ours. They have a rental house, the pond, the stables, etc. and so they have different insurance needs. They need their own comprehensive policy.

What’s clear to me now is that they never had insurance for their property like they thought they had, even when we were with the RRRG. The key thing to understand is that the RRRG only insures USHPA members and it only insures them for accidents related to their flying activities. So, injuries and accidents incurred by USHPA members lounging around the pond area, swimming in the pond or jumping off the deck were never covered. Non-USHPA friends and family recreating at the pond were never covered for anything at all. The only conceivable thing that the RRRG would cover at the pond is if a pilot came out of the sky and crashed into someone, causing an injury. That’s pretty much it.

A quick comparison of NEXT vs. the RRRG through Google finds that NEXT is much more substantial than RRRG. NEXT has an AM Best rating of A-(Excellent) and has been funded by investors to around $881,000,000. The RRRG itself doesn’t seem to have a rating from AM Best, but has to advertise the ratings of the reinsurance companies behind them (which are good ratings). And the RRRG’s funding is minimal, something like $3,000,000.

This insurance issue is one of the most difficult issues that the BOD has had to deal with. Please recognize that we are making decisions with the best interests of the club in mind.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/sbnf/news-events/?cid=FSEPRD799192

Jerome, how could this be your launch? There’s no orange jump suit anywhere.