This week Behind the Prop presents a special double episode! Part one features a listener question regarding fuel and part two consists of some great info regarding aircraft renters insurance.
If you haven't gotten the picture by now... fuel is pretty darn important! Our mechanic guest Ray told us a few weeks ago if he could only check ONE system before takeoff, it would be the fuel. Wally said the three most important things to check before every flight are: fuel, fuel, and fuel! So we talking fuel again this week. Then we transition into some details on aircraft renters insurance. What is it and who needs it!? All that and more on this week's extra informative double episode of Behind the Prop!
Clear prop! Number two following twin traffic on 3 mile final. JB using runway 25 on a 4-mile final.
This is Behind the Prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot, Bobby Doss. and it's co-host: major airline captain Designated Pilot Examiner, Wally Mulhearn. Now let's go behind the prop!
What's up, Walling? hey bobby, How are you? fantastic. So we released an episode on fuel systems we talked about deal systems in both pipers and Cessna and shared a lot of information and we got a very interesting question. That actually has another question hidden in at that. We're going to talk about today. Little bit one of our listeners wrote in and asked us what we think The minimum gallons of fuel should be a Cessna one Seventy-two. and that brought up something I know we've talked about offline before, Wally. What's one of your thoughts or pet peeves?
One of my thoughts is I could care less How many gallons. I don't think of fuel as gallons. Okay. no sure. we all do though right. The only people do.
You're right when you go pay the bill you say. How many gallons that? I nineteen gallons times whatever Trying to think of fuel in minutes Fuel is think fuel is minutes as opposed to gallons. When I asked somebody How far away, They live from my house, a lot of times They'll say It's about twenty-five minutes away. And I always want well I I’d rather you tell me Twelve miles and then I can You know. I know the general direction. And I can apply some logic to it and kind of figure out how far away it is. in airplanes, Most of the time we're talking about gallons and smaller airplanes. How much fuel is on board The airplane forty-three gallons fifty-three gallons fifty forty-eight whatever. But think of that fuel as how many minutes do I have on board the airplane as opposed to how many gallons to have on the on board the airplane. and for a couple of reasons you're going to be flying Airplanes have different burn rates. Okay my Saratoga Holds one hundred and two gallons. I don't care about that holds I say it has five hours’ worth of fuel. burns about twenty gallons per hour and hundred gallons And again my bladder doesn't go more about three hours. So if I’m flying with full fuel it's never really an issue of that airplane. A seventy-two old some forty-three gallons and Burns about a gallon and our so again it holds about five-gallon five hours’ worth of fuel as well. and the reason being is when I When I look at minutes, let's take Let's just make some really easy math. Let's say we decide that our personal minimum to land an airplane is Ninety minutes worth of fuel, okay. Ninety minutes worth of fuel. And I look at A route okay. We're going to fly from point a to point b and it's going to take this many hours or this many minutes. Let's say it's going to take Three hours. and We have five hours’ worth of fuel onboard The airplane. well we're going to land with two hours’ worth of fuel. One hundred and twenty minutes and our minimum is ninety minutes while I know I have three thirty minutes of extra fuel at this point. so as I’m flying long and I’m hitting my checkpoints. I know I’ve got thirty minutes of headroom thirty minutes of fuel capital if you will if I hit my first checkpoint, I realize two minutes behind schedule all now. I know I’m going to land with twenty-eight minutes. my next checkpoint on another three minutes behind schedule now. Going to land with twenty-five minutes. and I can kind of project things and say well. Gee something is going on here That's not There wasn't in the plan are the winds different or what is going on here. Why are my. Why am I hitting these checkpoints constantly behind and So my time at checkpoints equates to fuel.
and you don't want to land with less than one or less than ninety minutes right. That's the reason we set that. I think I’ve heard talked to people like well, I'm only going to be fifteen minutes into my reserve right. So they just keep going and going and we've heard about the accidents and the problems like that's not landing with a minimum of around ninety minutes right.
You can't break that rule or you really don't have a personal minimum. So right you need to divert. I would assume or land or do something before you got to that pro work. You got into the problem zone right because what we know what happens. We get our destination and then we can't land we have to divert. There's an incident on the airfield. That's why we needed the ninety minutes. That's why we had the personal minimum. So don't think that you have enough time left. You have enough minutes left because you built in the ninety minutes. Stick to those hard guns because we have that for a reason right. Because I’m coming up short all the way.
They're right I I’ll ask applicants. How much fuel do we have onboard the airplane and the there's lots of ways that they'll answer some we'll say full-time thanks I might say. Well what is full tanks? Fifty-three gallons. Okay that that's right answer but, Again I like to think of it as We have you know, Three hundred minutes of worth of fuel.
Yeah, I flew back From Bedford Indiana in a warrior. There was one hundred. I think hundred fifty horsepower and it was in the wintertime but had strong south winds. We were probably doing ground Speed of fifty-five knots throughout most of that flight. At eight thousand ish feet coming back. if you didn't plan for that and you're thinking I’m going to get ten gallons an hour. You know to go somewhere you might run up short for your reserves and all those things because that was eating a lot of time right as we were trying turn that prop into that massive headwind And I that's the last thing I’d want to do. Probably if you're ferrying a plane like that you don't know that aircraft as well so you write really want to be on your game and you want to have personal minimums and you want to make sure you don't ever cheat into those sacred minutes. Even on pretty it was a really nice VFR day. But I wasn't going to play around with those that we stopped early on all three of our stops to make sure what we were calculating was not happening right.
Yeah, I think if you fly long enough, you're going to find one of those flights Where you land and you think to yourself oh boy. I should've I should've gotten feel thirty miles ago or that other airport and For whatever reason you try to stretch it. I mean there's an old saying better to beyond the ground wishing you’re in the air than be in the air wishing you're on the ground.
no question. so far, That's only happened to me. Once I was up there and I really was wishing I was on the ground and I’m sure I’ll have more. Hopefully not the other thing that we talked about In the past. And I don't think it was really about the fuel but it is an interesting story. We've both referenced The Killing Zone which is a great book if you haven't read it or listen to it on audible. I challenge you to go Listen to it. There's this mindset of fuel exhaustion that they talked about the book of the planes running out of fuel and people get hurt that way that it's often when people think they have enough fuel to go somewhere with no wins. They've done it many times, Will use an hour away in an hour back sixty minutes there sixty minutes back. and they have the have their fuel reserve in the plane. They have their own personal minimums. But today there's a headwind going over there and tailwind coming back. The math never works does it won't be like it's not a fifty-fifty split. You're not going to get it all back.
It's not you know Just I guess simple logic would say well, Gee this is an hour flight today. Took me an hour and fifteen minutes so coming home. It's going to take forty-five minutes. and it just doesn't work out that way just simply because you're in the headwind longer so if it's going to take you an hour fifteen going over it may take you fifty-two minutes coming back. You're not going to get all of that That capital if you will and that example.
Say we'll call it fifteen percent although it's not really, you're not going to get all fifteen minutes that back right your math. Just then was only eight right and if you think about, we're talking about teaching minutes versus gallons. How many people come up. Just short of the runway just short of the airport because of these miscalculations. minutes become very valuable. Yes, absolutely especially if we say. Don't go across that threshold of if my time is ninety minutes land with ninety minutes. If you land with eighty-five, You broke a rule. The could come back to haunt you for years to come.
And now back to Behind the Prop.
Here's part to this week's special double episode.
We released an episode about ownership versus renting etc. We talked a little bit about the cost of insurance and some things, but the question came up about renter's insurance. And what do I expect from my flight school etc. We thought we would jump on and knock out a quick episode To kind of help answer some of those questions. of course, as a owner of a flight school that requires renter's insurance. We I get a lot of questions. Why and what and how much. And how often blah blah blah and there's a lot of unknown out there. I think in a simple overview of it is I think renter's insurance is the only cheap thing in aviation. Everything's really expensive and renter's insurance costs money but it's not that expensive for what you're getting. Right. auto insurance my son. I pay probably three hundred and fifty dollars a month for my son's insurance just turned sixteen. We've got four cars in the family. He's it's expensive. renter's insurance is less than that for any aircraft You want to fly individually for an annual basis right so right. Renter's insurance is very inexpensive. But most flight schools probably have some sort of requirement for renter's insurance there's probably aircraft damage amount. Which is what everyone thinks about more than more often than not and then a liability amount. And that's really oddly enough, What insurance companies Think about the insurance companies. Their risk mitigates or is really the big one right, so Hit something damages, Property injured people, You know that that's where they're going to be out A lot of money. They probably think like we do From pilot's perspective says look at airplanes can be replaced, Take care of life and people, I and we'll get the aircraft if it's been will either unbounded or get another one right. The damage component, While is a significant part, Probably isn't the biggest piece to the to the insurance company. I asked my insurance guy question last year renewal time. And he's like you are very focused on what it's going to be the value of the aircraft hall value. The whole insurance the metal part and he go, We're really worried about someone walking through your hangar and cutting themselves on the arm just walking past the piece of sharp metal on an aircraft and what that could do, right. And I guess I just didn't think from that perspective so Insurance is probably my number Two biggest expense. Maybe pay and then insurance right there Somewhere around that mark, but It's an it's a big deal. It's a really big deal and what renter's insurance is actually doing protecting the non, It's called non owner owned insurance. It's for you to fly applying the you don't own. like if I were to come Fly your plane Wally. I probably wouldn't come fly you're playing if you would even let me if I didn't have a non-owner renters policy Because I wouldn't want you to be at risk for anything that I might do. and the reality is it might not have anything to do with bad piloting been metal. I've seen a lot of metal get when the pilot did nothing wrong, I've seen tires blow out. I've seen lots of things happen. How about acts of god? We've had some bird strikes that have caused significant damage to the airplane. And maybe that wouldn't be something that an insurance company would ask non-owner owned renter to pay for. But somebody's going to end up paying for it and I would rather be protected. Yeah, I guess you've been around a long time but maybe not from this side, Wally? What are your thoughts when you first think of renter's insurance?
I think renter's insurance is almost sort of a new thing. I know me growing up in Learning to fly back in the nineteen eighties and doing a lot of flight instruction back down again longtime ago, but I don't even know If renter's insurance was available. I never had it the flight schools. I worked at two different flight. Schools actually three different flight schools and it was not required. It just wasn't something that was on the radar screen. And then I don't know when I got back in the flying little airplanes, probably six seven years ago, It was about fifty about half the flight Schools required it but some of them still did not require it. I think it's more the norm than not so the norm. But I would say that that the limits of liability or different dependent on the flight schools one flight school may want a certain amount and other one may want a different amount. I've heard of people buying a policy and then going to another flight school and it didn't quite meet their minimum liability requirements.
And so they had to up the policy. Luckily the insurance companies will let you usually let you just go in and say I want to change this from x to x plus whatever to up the amount.
Yeah, It was a big decision in last year. Were we went from being a flight school That didn't require it to becoming a flight school That did require it. and it really is just the mass expense of And what insurance companies wants you to do to limit their risk and liability on and so we had to take that step as well. And I think we probably are a little bit on the higher end as it relates to whole value. most schools I think in the Houston area somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five. We went with thirty To be I guess the one time where we weren't raising that year after year just figured we would hopefully be able to stay there for a long time. And that's probably where the difference in the expense comes. I think most probably have a two hundred- and fifty-thousand-dollar liability and twenty-five per passenger as the minimums For in movement type stuff but it is something that I think You would be remiss to not have whether you're school was requiring it or not. There's this thing that insurance companies call subrogation. They if they choose to come after you even if the flea policies primary that doesn't mean that they don't choose to come after you if you're the school or the club or something that you may rent from or go to doesn't have a subrogation clause for their renters, You are at risk for being subrogated. Which means that it if they think you're negligent or could be a fault and they come Get your insurance company's money or your money they're going to do that.
So insurance is one that I would not flirt or play around with. It's a big deal. planes costs money. And there's a lot of liability when we're in the air and something could possibly go wrong. so my advice: get renter's insurance Someone walked in the other day with a renter's insurance policy. I'm normally looking to make sure that the amounts meet our mouths because they're more often than not just shy. This gentleman had a hundred-thousand-dollar whole insurance whole value insurance and he said look the expenses so small. I don't want to ever be at risk. So a hundred grand a fairly significant Renter's insurance policy for these small single engine aircraft. but some clubs that flato sixes and other things they have three hundred-thousand-dollar requirements like. They're not going to let their plane ever be at risk. And you are pilot in command on something like that so It's an interesting. It's an interesting paradigm you think about the types of aircraft that you could rent With a renter's insurance policy.
Anything to wrap with, Wally, as we reflect on renting and owning last week or Monday and then really what we're talking about today as it relates to insurance?
And I would just say that when you do have a renter's insurance policy it's you basically get to take it with you wherever you go so if your flight school a and then you move or you go to different flight School that's policies going to go with you so it's not. It's not assigned to a certain flight school.
Yep, and probably we're talking between three fifty and five fifty On the numbers that we're talking about, depending on where you're at in your Aviation career and so you spread that out. You're talking fifty dollars a month on the high side. That's a dollar fifty a day and it's not that bad right no doubt as always thanks for listening. Stay safe and stay behind the pro.
Thanks for checking out the Behind The Prop podcast. be sure to click subscribe and check us out online at BehindTheProp.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Show creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co-host is Wally Mulhearn. This shoe is for entertainment purposes Only. and not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember: fly safe!