Insurance

Prizefighter Gene Tunney a year ago flew in a Sikorsky Amphibian the 150 miles from Speculator, N. Y., to New York City. To insure his life for $300,000 and the plane for $30,000 during the single, short trip, his insurance company charged a premium of $1,000. Another company might have charged more, another less. No one knows what is a fair rate for aviation insurance risks. Whatever standards exist are constantly fluctuating and depend on a multitude of conditions and contingencies. To help the insurance companies fix standards the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics last week instituted a thoroughgoing survey of aviation mortality.

Aviation insurance includes, besides personal accident and life risks, risks against planes, cargoes, airports, public liability, passengers, employes, fires, windstorms, thefts. The usual life or accident policy generally forbids flying. Four Manhattan underwriters predominate in the nation's aviation insurance business--Aero Underwriters Corp., United States Aviation Underwriters, Wm. H. McGee & Co., Associated Aviation Underwriters. The last is the most powerful. Formed last March it groups 13 fire and marine insurance companies and three casualty companies, whose aggregate assets were then $330,000,000.

First person to take out a special air policy was Horatio Barber. In 1912 he went to Lloyd's in London to insure himself against liability to passengers who might travel in a fleet of five planes which he owned. Lloyd's knew nothing of the risks, told him to write out his own policy, being just to them and himself. That led to an affiliation with Lloyd's which, after the War, distracted him from flying. Now, 54, he is in Manhattan, president of Barber & Baldwin, Inc., underwriting affiliates with Aero Underwriters Corp.

How unsettled are aviation insurance rates, two offers last week indicated. Both were for damages to houses caused by planes. American Insurance Co. of Newark, N. J., figured that $1.56 a year was sufficient premium for $2,500 insurance. Continental Insurance Co. of New York figured $3 the yearly premium for $2,500 insurance on property within one mile of an airport, $2.50 for property between one and five miles from airports, $2 for properties farther away.