Life Insurance for Pilots
June 23, 2026 - By Rick Durden
Read Full Article: AvBrief.com
Hey! Wake up! I can see you from here—you saw the word insurance in the title of the piece and promptly fell asleep. After all, insurance is something we recognize that we must have, we buy it, get the policy, ignore it, and only pay full attention when we make a claim that is rejected.
That can be harmful to your family’s financial well-being if you are a general aviation pilot and approach your life insurance purchase as you do with home and vehicle insurance. You will almost invariably pay too much for the coverage you desire or have no coverage if you are killed in a general aviation airplane.
The reason this has increasingly become a financial minefield for pilots is the way life insurance is now marketed by the insurers to make it ostensibly easy and inexpensive to purchase. You go to a website, fill out the form, press “send,” and wind up with a quote almost immediately as the algorithms match the stuff you put in the application with one of the hundreds of boilerplate life insurance policies available, and presents you with the one that it decides fits you and is competitively priced.
Photo: Larry Anglisano
Not Part of the Great Unwashed
The problem is that those policies do not include coverage should you die pursuing a “hazardous” activity as defined by the underwriters (the folks who analyze risk and then come up with policy terms and premium prices) at the insurance company. Accordingly, if you are such things as a pilot, or scuba diver, or skydiver, or motorcycle racer, you will get a policy that excludes coverage for those activities. If you want coverage, the insurer will stick you in with the rest of the life insurance buying population, rate you as a higher risk, and charge a higher premium, often much higher. Most insurance companies rate airline pilot risk as right there with other “normal” occupations, but those policies also do not cover you if you are flying a general aviation airplane.
Wait a minute—I’ve got an instrument rating, more than 500 hours total time, and fly more than 75 hours a year—that puts me into a pretty good condition when it comes to risk for a general aviation pilot. Sorry, GA pilots make up less than one tenth of one percent of the American population—insurance companies almost invariably won’t make the effort to explore the real risk you present; it just lumps you in with all who partake of “hazardous” activities, as defined by the insurance companies.
Use a Specialist
That’s the bad news for general aviation pilot life insurance. But how can one lowly pilot take on the insurance industry and convince underwriters that you are a safe pilot and deserve coverage for general aviation flying at a reasonable price? The answer is to go to an insurance broker who specializes in life insurance for pilots. It does not cost you a cent to buy life insurance through a specialized broker; while the broker has a fiduciary duty to you, the insurance company pays the broker a defined fee when you buy the policy that the broker has found for you. It’s one of the rare win/win situations in the world today. You get the expertise and experience of a specialized broker who has already gone into the insurance market and found underwriters who will take a minute and offer a policy that covers general aviation flying at a price that reflects your level of safety for the flying you do and the ratings you hold. Warning: The insurance broker/agent who got you a good price and coverage on your home and auto insurance does not have the specialized knowledge necessary to do the same thing for life insurance for you if you want coverage while flying general aviation airplanes.
Now let’s roll over the rock and uncover how life insurance is written and why a general aviation pilot should consult a specialist broker to buy a life insurance policy.
Insurance is, in essence, a product that you purchase to mitigate risk that would give you a financial hit too expensive to afford if you didn’t have insurance. Think of your house, your car, or your airplane. Your life is an asset to the people closest to you and that can be hurt financially when you shuffle off this mortal coil. Accordingly, if you are in such a condition, you probably want to buy life insurance.
There are two types of life insurance: what is often called “whole life,” and term. Whole life is a life insurance policy that includes some investment return or annuity in addition to the insurance portion. It is ordinarily purchased through one’s financial advisor and is beyond the scope of this article; however, it might not be a bad idea to get a specialist broker involved. Term life insurance is in effect for several years, usually between 10 and 30, and pays out the full coverage to those you designate should you die during the term. The price per year stays the same during the term.
Premiums for any insurance are set by the insurance company’s underwriters—the folks we think of wearing green eye shades and working huddled over their computers using the law of very large numbers to estimate how many claims will be made against a policy in a given time and set the price (premium) for the insurance to cover the claims and make money for the company.
Life insurance underwriters have created seven risk classifications for insureds (those who buy a policy). From best to worst, they are: Preferred Plus/Best, Preferred, Standard Plus, Standard, Preferred Smoker, Standard Smoker, and Uninsurable (the company will not write a policy for that person at any price).
I’ll note here that premium prices for women are lower than for men because they are significantly less likely to take stupid risks—not so much of the “hold my beer and watch this” behavior.
In the process of researching this article, I found the following average annual premium prices by risk classification for a 50-year-old male seeking a 20-year term, $1 million policy:
| Premium | Price |
|---|---|
| Preferred Plus/Best | $1,600 |
| Preferred | $1,890 |
| Standard Plus | $2,600 |
| Standard | $2,930 |
| Preferred Smoker | $6,900 |
| Standard Smoker | $8,600 |
Life insurance underwriters are very good at anticipating the number of death claims for the vast majority of our population, but they rarely know anything about general aviation pilots and their level of risk other than frequently hearing about “little airplane” crashes. In their view, the tiny little group of general aviation pilots are engaged in a hazardous activity, and they are just shoved into one of the higher risk categories or denied coverage for dying in a general aviation crash.
I reached out to the brokers who advertise specializing in pilot life insurance. One responded: Travers & Associates. I had a long, interesting conversation with Francis Medler, vice president of sales for Travers.
Medler explained that when a general aviation pilot applies for life insurance, the fact that he is a pilot means that most underwriters will rate him as Standard or, at best, Standard Plus. What often hurts pilots is that they get a quote, buy the policy, and never read it. Even if they do read it and find out that general aviation flying is excluded from coverage, it may be difficult to fix the problem at a reasonable price. That’s why Medler (and I) strongly recommend that a general aviation pilot seeking life insurance do so through a specialized broker.
A Special Relationship
Specialized pilot life insurance brokers make their living by catering to the population of general aviation pilots by going to the life insurance companies, meeting with brokers and obtaining agreements for those underwriters to evaluate the true risk presented to the company by a particular pilot. Doing that behind-the-scenes homework creates a special relationship between the pilot insurance broker and underwriters. Accordingly, specialized brokers can usually get a premium price below the one-size-fits-all customer computer program the insurer uses. That means more customers for the insurance company and potentially lower premiums for pilots. Medler said that a specialized broker can get a pilot who meets the specific guidelines set up by underwriters who are willing to examine a pilot’s true risk as a Preferred or Preferred Plus/Best rating with no general aviation exclusion, something nearly impossible for a pilot applying via a life insurance company’s general online application. That’s why the online life insurance application created by Travers & Associates asks for details about your ratings, flying background, and flying you are doing.
Medler noted that as a specialist, he has been able to get underwriters who are willing to look at the real risk of pilots to rate about 9% of general aviation pilot applicants at the best risk level—Preferred Plus/Best. Medler said that the sweet spot for a better risk rating for a pilot is at least 300 hours of flying time and flying 30 to 300 hours a year. An instrument rating helps. Medler said that the “Standard” rating is average for life insurance applicants generally; half are rated higher, half lower. Underwriters will look at the type of flying you do, corporate pilots are rated as very low risk, while CFIs giving primary instruction are not looked upon as favorably. Underwriters do “stack” risks—if you engage in a number of activities that are labeled hazardous, the more you do so, the lower you are going to be rated.
Medical Exam
Getting one of the best ratings means that the applicant will have to take a medical exam. It is more thorough than an FAA medical because it includes blood work where the pilot applicant may discover he has unrealized diabetes and will reveal the presence of nicotine in the blood stream—putting the kibosh on those who claim to be nonsmokers. Medler did say that pilots tend to be healthier than the general population of applicants.
The benefit of the medical is that you are given a more accurate risk assessment than you would get for a policy that does not require a medical exam. If you are in good health and buy one of those policies, you are subsidizing those in bad health who avoided taking an exam.
The Takeaway
If you want to learn to fly aerobatics, tailwheel, or into the backcountry, you go to an instructor who has the skills and experience to teach those specialized operations. The same applies to a pilot seeking life insurance—go to a specialist or risk paying more than you should for coverage and/or having coverage for flying general aviation airplanes excluded.
The original version of this report stated example policy premiums that were inaccurate. The examples were corrected in this version.
