Buying an airplane can have a lot of hidden costs and so it is good to do your research prior to buying to have an accurate view of the total costs of airplane ownership. I often tell people that “the purchase price is the cheap part” because there seem to be a lot of extra expenses that come up from month to month when owning an airplane.
As of this writing I own a 1975 Cessna 182P but my family has also owned a 2008 Cessna 182T for a number of years as well. I wanted to share a few data points from owning each of those airplanes in regards to the insurance. So, how much does insurance for a Cessna 182 cost?
Your insurance rate will largely depend on the insured hull value at about $1,000 per year for every $100,000 in insured hull value. In other words, a $100,000 Cessna 182 is approximately $800-1,000 per year to insure, while a $300,000 Cessna 182 is around $3,500-4,000 per year.
In the rest of this post we’ll cover a few specific insurance quotes and rates for a couple different 182’s from my personal ownership experience, as well as what you can do to lower your insurance costs. I have worked with the same aviation insurance broker for a number of years now and have been able to have several conversations with him about what impacts rates.
Specific Insurance Quotes for Two Different 182’s
I highly recommend working with an aviation-specific insurance broker as they will be able to help find you the best deals for your particular situation. While a general insurance broker will be able to help you with your airplane, there’s a good chance you’ll be dealing with underwriters who don’t work in aviation much and as such won’t be able to give you the best rate.
Personally I’ve used Ladd Garner Aviation Insurance based in Dallas, Texas and I’ve run into a number of pilots across the state that also use him. He’s helped me look through different quotes from lots of different underwriters and selecting the best one from year to year to get me the most favorable rates.
Airplane #1: 1975 Cessna 182P – Retail value is probably around $120k based on the engine time, total time, avionics, and other upgrades. I insured for $100k worth of hull value. Here are insurance premiums I have paid the last few years:
2016: $927, carrier: Global Aerospace
2017: $855, carrier: Global Aerospace
2018: $790, carrier: Global Aerospace
2019: $836, carrier: Global Aerospace
Rates have been going down for me but per my broker’s feedback this has less to do with my experience increasing and more to do with just the general supply/demand in the insurance market. I was flying about 100-120 hours per year so my make and model experience was increasing during those different quoted periods.
I don’t have a particular loyalty to Global Aerospace but they were consistently the most affordable option. For context, I received quotes from $836 (which I picked) all the way up to $1,674 from different carriers. So the rates can definitely vary some. I have been pleasantly surprised that the 182 is very affordable to insure.
Airplane #2: 2008 Cessna 182T – Hull value of $300k. In 2013 the insurance premium was $3,994 through Old Republic. My dad was actually the owner of this airplane and at the time he had about 2,500 hours of total time. For the few years he owned that airplane the rates remained fairly steady at the $3,500-4,000 range or so.
Takeaway: While each situation is going to be different, these two data points tell me that for every $100k or so in hull value there is approximately $1k of coverage needed. For the Skylane, insurance is pretty affordable. Comparatively, insurance for my 2012 Silverado is over $1,000 per year and it has far less hull value than the 182 (I know car vs. airplane insurance is not an apples to apples comparison, but for the context of my monthly budget it seems personally relevant to compare the two).
Things That Do (or Don’t) Impact Your Insurance Rate
While I am satisfied with my current insurance rate, each year I keep asking my broker if there is anything else I can do to keep marginally lowering the rate. Here are the things I have read about potentially lowering your insurance premiums compared to what my real experience has been (along with input from my agent):
Hull Value: As demonstrated above, this is maybe the most significant input driving your premium costs. It makes sense, too. The more you are insuring your aircraft for, the more liability the underwriter has if a claim is made on that aircraft. In other words, if they are insuring you for more, your rate will go up. There isn’t an exact formula that applies across the board (and every carrier will have their own actuarial science and risk profile that determines your premium cost) but in my personal experience for 182’s every $100k in hull value comes with approximately $1k or so in premium costs. I had also quoted out $110k and $120k hull values for my 1975 Skylane and each of those bumped the premiums about $100 each. You will get a wide range of quotes so be sure to shop the rates and get one that suits you.
The Airplane’s Safety Record: Something I’ve learned but can’t demonstrate mathematically is that when you insure an airplane you own, the underwriters really don’t pay a ton of attention to your experience level, provided it meets a certain threshold. As long as you have their required make and model time, you really start to get compared to all of the other owners flying that same aircraft, and are put into a similar risk pool which impacts your premium.
Said another way, Cirrus aircraft, while they are incredibly sophisticated and very safe, have a worse safety record across the board than a Cessna 182. This isn’t necessarily because the aircraft is more or less safe, but because of the average pilot flying a Cirrus. It isn’t uncommon for Cirrus pilots to have more money than they do flight experience and so the frequency of mishaps and insurance claims is higher than a comparable pool of 182 pilots.
So if you fly a Cirrus, you kind of end up paying for the damages of other pilots flying that same airplane. There are some breaks for certain experience levels and such, but by and large you are compared to the “average” pilot that would be flying that airplane and its historical insurance claims data.
Pilot Time: Most insurance carriers won’t insure you until you’ve met a minimum flight hour requirement in the specific make and model of that airplane. It’s not a lot and usually around 25 hours or so (sometimes less). Once you’ve passed this requirement you really don’t get material price breaks after a certain point. If you have 500 hours of make and model time versus 1,000, you probably aren’t going to see a drastic change in your premium expense.
Carriers do ask for your total time, make and model time, instrument time, and time within the last 90, and 180, and 365 days. I am sure they have actuarial math to determine your rate based on these numbers but my broker hasn’t seemed to say I have a big price break coming once I hit a certain amount (currently I have about 500 hours of make and model time as of this writing).
Additional Licenses and Ratings: One of my justifications for getting my instrument rating was that I would get a break on my insurance premiums and that it would help pay back some of those training costs over the course of time. I was disappointed that there wasn’t much of a change in my rate (about 5% but it’s impossible to know if this was the only contributing factor in the rate change).
I have researched some other pilots’ experience and if you get a break at all, it’s around the 3-5% range for additional ratings. This won’t pay for a rating but I guess we’ll take the help wherever we can get it.
WINGS Credit: The FAA has the WINGS program where you can attend in-person sessions and online webinars that provide continuing education for pilots. A lot of the curriculum is around safety best practices, emergency procedures, and case studies on accidents. Once you have accumulated enough credits you can apply this towards your insurance. I asked my broker if this would help and he said that realistically it’s not going to move the needle.
I have read that some other pilots have seen as much as a 5% decrease in premiums but again it’s hard to tie that out to just completing an WINGS course. The bigger value-add from attending those courses is becoming a safer, better informed, and more proficient pilot. That’s better than any insurance policy you’ll find.