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Turbine Step-Up: Insurance Driven

Stepping up to an owner-flown jet? Plan on some focused time in the box - insurers are requiring simulator-based training or they won't issue an insurance policy.

It’s happened. You’ve dreamed of this forever. You can finally afford to step up from the piston-pounders you’ve been flying into the world of owner-flown turbines. 

You’re excited as a puppy in a shoe closet. Yet, when you discuss the idea with some of your friends with aviation backgrounds you respect, they shift into making-noncommittal-comments-while-nodding-politely mode and the folks you meet in the aircraft sales world suddenly start looking like big-game hunters shouldering each other aside to get the first shot—and you’re the prospective trophy for the mantel. What’s going on?

Rick Durden

Senior Editor Rick Durden has written for Aviation Consumer since 1994 and specializes in aviation law. Rick is an active CFII and holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation. He is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.