Page 19 - November 2022

to evolve with the market and place your coverage requires details and personalization. Transition pilots especially should put a considerable amount of effort into building their marketing submission. The official application still needs to be completed and submitted, but you can provide so much more information to be more than just a name with numbers transposed from a logbook onto a PDF document.
We’ve all heard about the shortage of homes for purchase across the country over the last five years. Potential buyers started including letters with their purchase offers, hoping to pull the heartstrings of the current owners. Whether it was a newly married couple wanting to start a family in a home that the current owners are selling because they have outgrown it themselves, or a family looking for the “perfect” backyard for their kids to play and dogs to run. Become the letter writer; write your story. Start with describing your aviation background; become relatable to your underwriter. Most aviation underwriters are in this business because they have a passion and interest in aviation, as well. Who knows, maybe you had your first airplane ride as a child in the EAA Young Eagles Program, just like that underwriter. Or maybe you volunteer as
a Young Eagles pilot and they were a recipient of one of those donor flights as a youth. The story and details in your letter may have a technical aspect, such as you have a minor in meteorology. To an underwriter, this could be a big attribute that wouldn’t be found on the application. We all know King Airs do a great job of getting us just high enough to be in the thick of icing and thunderstorms. Having a strong background and understanding of weather may hold a great deal of appeal to some underwriters. Speaking of weather, maybe you are an owner who is more risk adverse and have self- imposed weather minimums or duty days. Highlight those standards in your document. For example, assume you are a restaurant franchisee in the northwestern part of the country. You have 10 locations that you visit every two weeks. As a busy entrepreneur you also rarely use your King Air for personal use. Share all this information with your underwriter. On their desk it will read as:
= Same 10 airports every two weeks = they know the airport environment and the approaches intimately
= Using the aircraft for business = limited third party passenger exposure, probably employees on board so they will have workers’ compensation coverage
NOVEMBER 2022
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 17