Norman Osment, chief pilot for a rally car maintenance company, recently told EBAN of his grievances regarding high insurance premiums. He said: “It always seems a little unfair the amount of insurance we have to pick up and it’s across the board, not just rotary aircraft. The problem is that now there are so many smaller aircraft around, any upset in the aviation industry trickles down to higher premiums. You would have thought that by now insurers would start offering far more flexible payments and judging each individual company on its own merits.”

The company has operated an Agusta A119 Koala, based at Northampton’s Sywell Airport, for two years, before which it operated a Squirrel 350B. Osment said: “An average trip would probably be down to East London, taking the engineers to meetings and consultations around the country. We also go overseas to a variety of places, including Cyprus and Greece, in support of the rallies.”

Osment carries out a number of long-range flights with the A119. “Our average is around 50 minutes a flight, whereas for most people it’s around 20 minutes. We’ve been asked by our management if we could buy a twin-engine, but their performance is so pitiful that we told them we’d stay with our Koala.

“Compared with our Squirrel, the A119 can take twice the people, twice the distance and a little quicker. It was bought brand new and we had it configured to our specifications at Malpensa, Italy. It can carry eight people for two and a half hours or we can fill it with fuel and carry three people for four hours. There’s no other helicopter around which has that sort of performance.”

The company hasn’t found the insurance premiums directly attributable to September 11, although they have certainly risen since then. “There are so few insurance companies in the business that there must be some sort of monopoly situation. I think they also insure against things which very rarely happen. Airfields demand very high coverage, because no doubt someone has assessed the potential cost if an aircraft crashed into a hangar. There has to be that type of insurance, but really those costs should be borne by the airport itself.”