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Aircraft Ownership

Pilot Liability: Mitigating the Risks

Tools to help protect you should something go wrong, and to help you keep that something going wrong from ever happening.

Rick Durden
Verified

Edited By:

Omar Filipovic

If there’s a way to make the rounds on aviation social media, its bellying in a tough old warbird—with a cool photo as proof. Image credit goes to the resourceful Aviation 24/7 on Facebook. But with thorough maintenance records, good insurance coverage and a pilot with tight logbooks, the liability risks are reduced. For the unprotected, pilot liability is complicated with the potential for financial ruin, so Senior Editor and aviation attorney Rick Durden lays it all out in an important field report.
If there’s a way to make the rounds on aviation social media, its bellying in a tough old warbird—with a cool photo as proof. Image credit goes to the resourceful Aviation 24/7 on Facebook. But with thorough maintenance records, good insurance coverage and a pilot with tight logbooks, the liability risks are reduced. For the unprotected, pilot liability is complicated with the potential for financial ruin, so Senior Editor and aviation attorney Rick Durden lays it all out in an important field report.

It’s happened to you because it’s happened to every pilot: You wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning in a cold sweat, as the nightmare played out. You swerved while rolling out in a gusty crosswind. Suddenly you were heading toward a line of parked airplanes. You applied opposite rudder so hard you were sure that you’d put it through the firewall and turned the yoke all the way into the wind to keep the upwind wing down and take advantage of the drag of the down aileron. To your astonishment and relief, you got the airplane straightened out on the edge of the runway, missing a runway light and taxiway sign by the barest of margins.

Parade of Horribles

The nightmare presented a parade of horribles—you were still going fast; if you’d hit something the quick stop would have hurt or killed your passengers. There were people by those parked airplanes—you can vividly recall the wide “O” of their mouths and shocked eyes as they realized that you were going to hit them, and it was going to hurt. A lot. You were going to do something you had never done in your life, bend an airplane you were flying and maybe tear up others—an almost unendurable blow to your pride in the work you’d put into becoming a pilot.

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.