371 ForeFlight Aircraft Insurance Comparison Tool with Connor Hailey
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Welcome to a special Newsmakers edition where we talk with people who are making the news. Today we're talking with Connor Haley from ForeFlight about their new aircraft insurance comparison tool that helps aircraft owners compare the cost of their insurance policy with the cost that other pilots are paying for the same aircraft type. So if you own an airplane or think you might own one someday, stick around to learn about this new way to compare insurance costs.

Hello again, and welcome to Aviation News Talk, where we talk in general aviation. My name is Max Trescott. I've been flying for 50 years. I'm the author of several books and the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year. And my mission is to help you become the safest possible pilot. Last week in episode 370, we talked with Rachel Webster about her Satabria being stolen and left on a beach, and about the long recovery and repair process. So if you didn't hear that episode, you may want to check it out at aviationnewstalk.com slash 370.

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Now let me tell you a little about Connor Haley. Connor joined ForeFlight not long after getting his pilot certificate. Originally, he worked on ForeFlight's wake turbulence avoidance feature and later took on the company's efforts to increase transparency in the aviation insurance industry. And now here's our conversation with Connor Haley. Hi.

Conor, welcome to the show. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me, Max. Well, I got to say, many of us were stunned to see that ForeFlight is offering something related to airplane insurance. So I've just got to ask, how did ForeFlight end up in this business? Yeah, a lot of our employees are pilots. And so we want to, as much as possible, allow people to fly more. And the best way to do that is by lowering the cost.

There are certain things, obviously, that ForeFlight is in a good position to do and others not, right? We wouldn't be necessarily great at manufacturing airplanes and lowering those costs, but we can obviously help, especially when it comes to data and aggregating that data, given that so many pilots use ForeFlight. Okay. So we've got a tool that compares airplane insurance.

If you would, let's just share your screen and let's kind of talk through how this tool would work. I'm guessing you have an example we can use. And as you talk about it, talk about it as if we were on radio because obviously not everyone can see the screen. Yeah. So the first thing that a user is going to encounter is a screen that prompts them to upload their aircraft owner's insurance policy.

As a caveat, this is only available to aircraft owners at the moment. We hope to expand that to renters in the future. But you'll come onto a page where you see a sample policy. Insurance policies are very confusing, so we try to call out the specific things that we're going to extract from the policy using AI and the things that your document needs to have in it in order for us to process it properly. So we'll just drag and drop this sample insurance policy that I have.

Once we go through this flow here, you'll come onto a screen where you're going to verify your certificates, ratings, and hours. We're really looking for the things that are important to insurance companies in our product as well. So in this instance, because I use ForeFlight Logbook, it actually automatically pulls in all of my data, including my certificates and hours from ForeFlight Logbook.

So I can add and exclude certificates if I need to. If my ForeFlight logbook isn't up to date, maybe I can add my instrument rating or my commercial certificate or whatever it might be. And then again, same thing with the hours. I can modify those as well if I need to. So let me just stop you right there and ask you. So you said exclude certificates. So I've got multiple certificates, CFI, I fly with helicopters and airplanes. Give me an example of a certificate I might want to exclude and why.

Yeah. So for example, in this case, we're uploading a Bonanza policy. So in this case, your seaplane rating isn't necessarily going to be all that useful. I had my student pilot certificate on there, so I excluded that as well, just because it's not relevant. Okay. Coming from ForeFlight Logbook as well, we also have the number of hours that you've had in any given make and model. So if this information is all up to date, then it's going to be really easy for you to pre-fill this.

You can see here by hours across each of the different makes and models. And then in this case, because it's a Bonanza policy, I have no time in a Bonanza. I have no time in a retract. And so I'm just going to hit enter manually and I'm going to let that be zero. Once we are happy with how our certificates, ratings and hours look like, we can confirm. And now we're on a loading screen. It says this usually takes around 15 seconds. What's happening now is AI is actually parsing the document.

It's extracting all of the pertinent information that we need from the document in order to render that premium range. And then it presents it to the user so that the user can verify that information. AI is not perfect, right? And so it will make mistakes. And so this is sort of that double check to make sure that when you do get the result on the premium, that it's coming from correct data. Okay.

And so here you can see we have the policyholder, John Doe, pilot information. Are you over 70 or have you or a co-owner submitted a claim in the past five years? These can be important inputs to insurance. It's extracted the aircraft correctly. And then it's also extracted the coverages and premiums as well. And

And so this we really wanted to, because this is probably the most confusing part of an insurance policy, different insurers refer to the same thing differently with a different nomenclature across each of those insurers. And so we tried to make this a reflection of your policy. So for each of the major insurers, we actually use the same language here on the verification screen as they do in their policies themselves.

So that will be different across users and it will be different in terms of what they see. Okay, I see. And you mentioned co-owners. So for example, if I'm buying an airplane with a partner, could we use this to kind of get estimates of what our insurance might be before we actually have insurance? And do we upload both of our personal information?

Yeah, so something that you see often enough in partnerships, especially if one pilot is significantly more experienced than one of the co-owners, is they'll basically do a delta between what the more experienced pilot pays versus what the less experienced pilot pays.

And so if you're going to do something like that, and maybe you're the more experienced or the less experienced pilot coming on to use this tool, you can say, this is the range of roughly what I would be paying if I were a solo owner of this plane. And then this is what the less experienced pilot would pay. And so that's a way to sort of tease out that differential. Okay. Once we hit confirm, this is where we're actually going to move on to the fair pricing screen itself. Okay.

In this case, I marked that I do have a claims history. So that

action item there or that extra information is saying that your claims history may cause your insurance premium to be higher than other similar pilots. That's a fairly obvious one. We have other sort of tidbits like that as well that we try to present to users. And you can see in this policy based on the time that I have no retract time, no time in make and model. And I have a claims history that the sort of fake premium that I've entered on this policy is actually a pretty fair one. Got it. So it shows basically on the high end of the range. We'll go ahead and describe the numbers on the range.

So it says that I have a solid deal. It presents a range of where we would expect a pilot with these characteristics potentially to fall. And so in this case, if you're off way off to the right, then that's going to be considered probably a bit too high for what you should be paying. And then if you're on the very lower end of the spectrum, you know, you should thank your broker because that's a that's a pretty good deal that you've got.

And so you can upload as many policies as you'd like. So if you have multiple aircraft, you can continue through this process, you know, do it a second and a third time. Okay. And so, for example, the numbers on this, and I'm guessing this is just totally made up. It shows a range of $2,416 to $3,624. And it says your policy, $3,402. And that was the amount that you uploaded saying that's how much you're currently paying. Correct. Okay.

And then where do we go from here? So for users who come on and are happy with their policies, happy with their broker, I think that this is a point to just give you that reassurance that says, you know, things are trending in the right direction for me. I feel like my premiums are fair.

If a user comes across this and maybe their premium is higher than they expected in comparison to the range, our goal is to just start a conversation with your broker around why is that the case? Is there something that we can do here to potentially bump this down? Are there insurers who are more receptive to my needs? There are some insurers who are better with pilots over 70. There are other insurers who are better with certain types of aircraft. And so just really starting that conversation.

What if I have not yet purchased an airplane, but I'm thinking about doing it, and so I don't have a cost of my current policy? Is there a way I can use this tool to see what range I should expect when I go out to get my first policy? We're working right now on allowing users to upload quotes as well.

And we expect to have that soon. No specific timeline, but it's something that we're actively working on. Well, what if I don't have a quote because I'm just starting the process? Can I at least see the range? Not yet. So that's something that we want to allow for down the road.

But it's not something that we're doing just yet. Now, is this limited to the U.S. or could people in other countries use this tool? It's currently limited to aircraft based in the U.S., yes. So I'm dying to know this. I'm looking at that very attractive $2,400 and 16 policy, and I'm just dying to know, all right, what company offered that price? Because I want to call them. Is there any way people can find out which companies offered any of these prices?

No. So all of this data is completely anonymized and aggregated. It's not shared with any third parties, and it's not shared with our users on an individual basis as well either. So that's not information that you can come across at this point. But if I were to slip you a $20 bill, maybe you'd help me.

All right. No, I understand. So are there plans to monetize this particular tool in some way other than including it as a feature in ForeFlight? Obviously, it's a beta right now, but what are you thinking in the terms of the future in terms of how this tool might be made available once it's finally ready for primetime?

Right now, we're really focusing on this piece. We have a lot to digest in terms of how things that we want to add to this tool, things that we want to improve. We want to allow you to slice and dice the data in different ways, filter more, get more granular with the flying characteristics that you can include in this. So right now, we're really focused on improving this part of the product.

So it sounds like right now any ForeFlight user can go ahead and use this particular tool. Is it possible that at some point in the future it might be a feature in one of the higher plans and maybe not available at the basic level? Or how do you think this might roll out? No, the plan is to keep this available to all ForeFlight users.

The reality is that ForeFlight users of every subscription tier are aircraft owners, and we want this to be available to all of them. And how do people find out more about this tool on the web or in their ForeFlight app? How do they find it? Yeah, you can visit foreflight.com slash support slash insurance. We can share the link.

And that will have a lot of the frequently asked questions that come up with the FairPrice tool. And if I were to open my ForeFlight app, where would I find this particular beta tool? You'll only find it on the web. It's not in ForeFlight Mobile, just because we felt that the web provides a better experience for this type of product. I understand. But it sounds like at some point in the future, you may roll it out on the mobile apps as well. There are no plans currently to do that. Have you had any feedback from insurance companies? What do they think of this tool?

We haven't heard from insurance companies. Okay. And do you think there's any chance in the future that ForeFlight might get into the insurance business and actually offer aircraft insurance? That's above my pay grade. I think that would require a lot of work on ForeFlight's part. So, you know, above my pay grade. I just had to ask.

So in general, when people want to find out information about the ForeFlight electronic flight bag app, where do they go? ForeFlight.com. That's great. Connor, thanks so much for joining us here today. Appreciate it, Max. Thanks for having me. And my thanks to Connor Haley for joining us here today. You can find more about ForeFlight at ForeFlight.com.

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