Aon | Professional Services – Charter flight usage in the time of COVID-19: risk and insurance implications for professional service firms
As professional assistance corporations continue to respond to the worries of the COVID-19 pandemic, employee wellbeing remains an complete precedence. The pandemic has designed quite a few major safety troubles for danger professionals, like the enhanced hazards all around air vacation. Whilst business airlines have applied extra basic safety measures, numerous corporations still feel the require for greater command to assist their employees’ welfare.
In reaction to escalating issues about air travel and worker basic safety, some qualified provider companies are significantly considering the use of charter air solutions. This enables, for instance, the use of bigger aircraft with a lot more area for social distancing. It also allows the firms to determine who will be on the flight, minimizing the likelihood of inflight infection.
The use of charter flights, nonetheless, does pose significant liability dangers in the function of a catastrophic incident. Ordinarily, charter flights are booked via unbiased operators, who usually carry legal responsibility and bodily damage protection to protect their own pursuits.
In the function of a crash, the operator’s insurance coverage would theoretically reimburse the operator for the value of the plane and respond to legal responsibility statements from the passengers’ people and other 3rd events. Nonetheless, looking at the quantity of claims that could be filed, the cost of authorized defense, and the price of damages awarded, the operator’s policy restrict may perhaps be insufficient.
A danger also occurs when a firm’s employees/associates choose to use non-public plane to decrease the possibility of infection. If a consumer is transported on these types of a flight, a lethal crash could final result in multi-million-greenback legal responsibility lawsuits in opposition to the person employee pilot and from the organization, representing exposure probably in extra of the legal responsibility insurance coverage carried by the employee pilot.
Insurance policy methods can assistance corporations control this hazard. For case in point, a Non-Owned Plane plan could possibly secure the firm by offering excess boundaries more than the employee pilot’s primary protection.
Provided the rise in alternate air journey trends among corporations, skilled support firms need to detect and evaluate this threat. Even one non-professional flight a yr could guide to a probably major loss to an organization.
Speak to
To focus on any of the topics lifted in this write-up, please get hold of Karina Gerstein or Robert Habel.
Karina Gerstein

Senior Vice President and Govt Director

Chicago
Robert Habel

Vice President

Chicago