turboplanner

Well firstly the falling assets. I would not expect the building/land to fall (for us on the farm the land is the only asset that does not fall in value) and that is curious that it is. I am not sure of the reason for that as I would doubt real estate would be falling in the ACT so could it be that it was over valued previously? Or is it a case of conservative accounting? (Which should be a good thing) or is it something untoward? (I doubt it as what benefit would there be in that?) I don't know enough about it though to say either way. Obviously the assets like computers and equipment are going to fall in value and that is something every good business owner would expect. So is falling asset prices good? Obviously it would be better if they didn't but in the real world assets other than land/water generally fall so it may not be good but it is reality. (I forgot about the cash savings which obviously should grow except when using them in a deficit year, I am far from an accountant!)

I can understand how you wouldn't be sure; but that's not what you told us back in your comment; I took that as telling us that everything was fine is we just looked at this comment or that comment.

 

The magnitude of the money involved is enough to hurt you as a member.

 

As for the deficits that is similar to robinsm's postI agree that deficits as a "normal" thing is not sustainable BUT I don't think deficits are always a bad thing if done for good reasons over a reasonable timeframe.

 

For example our farm last year had a large loss which was the first loss that we have had for many years but the improvements made have set us up to do much better in the future.

 

Now as we know with RAA they have updated the system so that we can do a lot more online and so that in the long run we can run a lot more efficiently. Now we can all argue how this could have been done better or cheaper but only a fool would say it didn't need doing.

Have you been able to extract from the financial reports exactly what has been done and how much it cost, bearing in mind that if you are talking about software costs, that should have been in previous years?

 

This has put a huge dint in our profit loss sheets but I would certainly expect that in this financial year or the next those setup costs will be gone which will go a long way to helping the long term viability.

If it has put a dint there, there should be amounts shown for this dint, shouldn't there? Now they are setup costs, and now they will be gone? Where are they shown?

 

I am even less knowledgible on the magazine so I had better leave that for someone who knows more about it.

You were unequivocal before in reassuring members, which could have put them off making their own enquiries, and I'm commenting here to show that it's not necessarily a good thing to reassure people without knowing your facts because it can make them complacent, or give them expectations which might not occur.

I've never seen a side by sided assessment of the magazine in any of the annual reports, yet it is such a big cost to the members.

 

What is intriguing is that the vague "Printing, Publishing, Merchandising expense has not changed much over the past five years.

 

How hard would it be to provided income for magazine sales, and Magazine Advertising Sales, vs the cost of production and distribution (and the breakdown to show how much Office expense was in that), to come up with a profit/loss.

 

Based on what you said above, this sounds like a feelgood statement, but this sort of analysis is what I would expect to see in an Annual Report, so the members don't have to just get a feel, jump to a conclusion and then hit anyone on this forum who might be raising some issues.

Reading a financial report is a little more than looking at the profit loss page.and: Bull I think if you have a full read of the financial report that a lot of your questions would be answered, pay special attention to the explanatory notes that are throughout it as they do explain a lot of the why’s.

It is an interesting report with a lot of explanatory notes which are worth reading. Imo it is a well set out report and again imo seems to be a lot easier to access now than in the "good old days"

I've written a few hundred Annual Reports, so I'm disqualifying myself as having a conflict of interest, but perhaps you would be good enough to explain how falling assets can be a good thing for members, and running deficits isn't going to take the organisation out, and how we can actually now see the profit/lost result of the Magazine, compared to the good old days, and so on.

 

 

2017 figures related to post #207

 

Assets, Cash - $658,071.00

 

Assets Building - $896,285.00

 

Total - $1,554,356.00 vs expected $4,114,110.00

 

 

I have to say I got frustrated that the tone hadn't changed in this thread, and looked the information up myself.

 

This is for the 2016 financial year.

 

Printing, Publication & Merchandise - $326,890.00 vs. $367,811.00 in 2012

 

Assets, Cash - $919,429.00

 

Assets Building - $896,285.00

 

Total - $2,192,570.00 vs expected $3,809,360.00

 

Other items which caught my eye:

 

Total Comprehensive deficit $227,535.00

 

Accommodation, meetings, travel $155,213.00 (up from $96,646.00)

 

Advertising, & Promotions $22,484.00

 

 

Let's get away from the hair splitting and posturing, and down to some hard facts, and to make it very simple, just zero in on two key assets:

 

In the 2012 Annual Report supplied to the Department of Justice, RAA value for the Office Building was $1,017,500.00

 

Cash in the bank was $1,782,494.00

 

Total of those two assets: $2,799, 994.00

 

At a conservative 8% earnings rate, those two assets should have been worth around $3,809,360.00 in 2016, and $4,114,110.00 in 2017

 

Does anyone from among the people who've been attacking Keith and reassuring everyone of a rosy future know what value those two assets are as of the last filed annual report?

 

And the answer to that one would be "No", or the figures.

 

As a guide on what's claimed to be one of the major issues of this aviation organisation; publishing a magazine, from the 2012 Annual Report, it's possible the magazine costs were part of what was listed as "Printing and Publications" - $367,811, down from $474,908 the previous year (the $107,000 variation not warranting a comment).

 

As far as what income the magazine generated from sales and a substantial number of ads, maybe it's in that report somewhere, but I didn't find it.

 

Nevertheless one would think that a comparison between the specific profit/loss of the magazine then and now, couldn't be a bad thing.

 

 

A static exhibit kills few.. a non flying plane is the safest.. Nev

Great idea FH; let's cancel the registrations on all of them.

 

 

If I start a rumour there is a Costco or an Ikea going on the old airport site. Then frame the debate around the greenies wanting to stop affordable housing. The toxicity issue is muted.

Yes, planning regulations have proven to be hopeless at protecting people.

 

 

this is regional QLD, we can legally dump our waste in a disused ipswich mine

There's a major difference between a putrescent waste tip and a hazardous waste tip; but I notice that Stocklands, well known to us in Victoria, are talking about building 6000 houses near the now-closed Willawong Toxic Waste Dump, Category: | The Courier Mail

 

 

Cleaning up YTWB is a big job and the contract will be lucrative, just right for the newly cashed up Wagner Group.Just move Life Flight chopper facility out to the new hospital they are building at Bailey Henderson.

It's a great site for a shopping centre, located on the edge of the growth zone

Costed up the movement of a Toxic dump lately? try up to $5 billion to take it to the nearest registered toxic waste dump. At one stage only a few years ago trucks were transporting it to the Lyndhurst Toxic Waste dump in Melbourne because no one else would take it.

 

 

Maybe the RAAus just doesn't have the power to do things cheaply. I think it needs dedicated staff at head office to keep feeding CASA with answers to questions.One day, after flying my plane for about ten years, my registration renewal was refused because there was only one photo of the fuselage numbers in some filing cabinet in Canberra. The cause of this was a CASA audit, not anything the RAAus did. So how about the theory that they are trying to keep costs down, but it is CASA that determines the costs ?

I think most CASA staff come from an organization where there is unlimited funding and unlimited time and no real work to do while waiting for WW3.

....and if I remember correctly, the cause of that was an idiot beating up a speedboat on lake Hume and flopping into the water and being difficult to identify, that probably being the last straw in a series of unidentified heroes such as the one flying through the trees in a caravan park etc.

 

 

Not quite.Almost All aviation laws In Australia are based on strict liability.But the aviation laws are not what a passenger could sue under. That would have to be civil law relating to negligence etc.

 

The pilot would be risking two entirely seperate legal battles here.

 

CASA for breaking aviation law ( that’s if he did. If not then CASA would not be interested. ) and civil law for the negligence claim.

Yes that's correct; if you decide you can ignore safety regulations the first you'll be convicted, and then you'll be on the end of a PL suit.

Not quite.Almost All aviation laws In Australia are based on strict liability.

But the aviation laws are not what a passenger could sue under. That would have to be civil law relating to negligence etc.

 

The pilot would be risking two entirely seperate legal battles here.

 

CASA for breaking aviation law ( that’s if he did. If not then CASA would not be interested. ) and civil law for the negligence claim.

Yes that's correct; if you decide you can ignore safety regulations the first you'll be convicted, and then you'll be on the end of a PL suit.

 

 

10,000 hours, 9,000 in seaplanes.

 

 

You would need to address UK law and search the case. The details will beon record, just a matterof working out where to look.

 

 

You would need to address UK law and search the case. The details will beon record, just a matterof working out where to look.

 

 

[edit - Turboplanner got his post in while I was composing this...]1@turboplanner[/uSER], an established doctrine of English civil law is "the loss should lie where it falls" and the law of contract, tort and other branches seeks to transfer the loss where the loss was imposed by a third party through negligence, recklessness, etc (which have different legal meanings). In your example above, you are implying the man in the Clapham Omnibus (i,e, the reasonable man) would not have been able to reasonably differentiate the level of risk posed between an airliner and the flat expanses of major airports and an ultralight and a small grass strip?

In Australia, the man on the Clapham bus is often called "a person of reasonable intellligence"The Australian law is based on the 1932 Scottish Court of Session case: Donoghue v. Stevenson (Case study: Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932)), so I would be surprised if it was any different to Australia.

 

The problem is in the comprehension, and particularly with A type personalities trying to pretend it doesn't apply to them.

 

In the example I gave, I would say that the majority of people (and as expounded on here over and over again) think that flying is very safe, and in this case, although the strip was much shorter and surrounded by trees, that these aircraft, which has wasn't familiar with in any way could just come back to where they started from. The reasonable man is note expected to have an understanding of aerodynamics.

 

Even in this discussion there is a mixture of UK, US, and Australian definitions being applied to the UK Crash, so it's going to get complicated. Add to that the introduction of Product Liability laws (which applied in the US), and in your example above which refers to negligence and recklessness.

 

In Australia we have the tort of negligence ( referred to in the link I provided), and Culpable negligence, which is a criminal Act (and probably similar to your "reckless" term.

 

You can be hit by on of the other or both.

 

In our discussions, often the point the poster is making is related to culpable negligence, when the subject we are discussing is the Donghue v. Stevenson unintended negligence.

 

It would be very sad if this is what has become of society for two reasons: 1) man's power of deduction and reasoning as been so diminished that he cannot make a reasonable assessment of risk of anything (say the difference between jumping into the sea at Bells Beach and a local swimming pool) and b) an advanced society such as ours cannot educate man enough to be able to make these decisions based on the information presented to them.

It would, but the cases I've seen haven't gone that close; the Bellerini v. Shire of Berrigan was a case of diving into the Murray River, which has been there for tens of thousands of years, but when you read the reasons for the judgement it fits the snail in the bottle case.

 

Of course, if there was neglect or recklessness in the accident, it would be a different kettle of fish and I accept in these circumstances, there would be evidential difficulty, in which case a country may be at liberty - such a the UK - to presume fault of the pilot and therefore ensure the risk is always borne by a specific party and that the party is aware it is they their responsibility to insure for the risk regardless of the actual circumstances. However, in the absence of such specific direction/law from the state, then, as sad as the outcome of the hypothetical case would be and on the assumption there were no neglect, recklessness or legal compliance issue (e.g. to ensure adequate stopway was mowed through the trees), why should someone else be held responsible for what is, to a reasonable man, an obvious risk that on this case materialised?

Not only is negligence always required, but it must be PROVEN by the plaintiff, and many fail

 

Or has our own obligation to assess general risks to ourselves and insure against them been dispensed with?

We can only assess the risks based on our own knowledge; at one point four million Australians and forty million Americans a year were being hospitalised with food poisoning. How were they to tell, from sight, that the food they ate in the restaurant was contaminated with faeces? However there is a definition of contributory negligence, you can bet the defendant's lawyers are going to include that in their counter-claim.DISCLAIMER

 

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. For legal advice you should always consult a lawyer, and I would recommending that you consult a public liability specialist lawyer.

 

 

[edit - Turboplanner got his post in while I was composing this...]

 

@turboplanner, an established doctrine of English civil law is "the loss should lie where it falls" and the law of contract, tort and other branches seeks to transfer the loss where the loss was imposed by a third party through negligence, recklessness, etc (which have different legal meanings). In your example above, you are implying the man in the Clapham Omnibus (i,e, the reasonable man) would not have been able to reasonably differentiate the level of risk posed between an airliner and the flat expanses of major airports and an ultralight and a small grass strip?

In Australia, the man on the Clapham bus is often called "a person of reasonable intellligence"

The Australian law is based on the 1932 Scottish Court of Session case: Donoghue v. Stevenson (Case study: Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932)), so I would be surprised if it was any different to Australia.

The problem is in the comprehension, and particularly with A type personalities trying to pretend it doesn't apply to them.

 

In the example I gave, I would say that the majority of people (and as expounded on here over and over again) think that flying is very safe, and in this case, although the strip was much shorter and surrounded by trees, that these aircraft, which has wasn't familiar with in any way could just come back to where they started from. The reasonable man is note expected to have an understanding of aerodynamics.

 

Even in this discussion there is a mixture of UK, US, and Australian definitions being applied to the UK Crash, so it's going to get complicated. Add to that the introduction of Product Liability laws (which applied in the US), and in your example above which refers to negligence and recklessness.

 

In Australia we have the tort of negligence ( referred to in the link I provided), and Culpable negligence, which is a criminal Act (and probably similar to your "reckless" term.

You can be hit by on of the other or both.

 

In our discussions, often the point the poster is making is related to culpable negligence, when the subject we are discussing is the Donghue v. Stevenson unintended negligence.

 

 

It would be very sad if this is what has become of society for two reasons: 1) man's power of deduction and reasoning as been so diminished that he cannot make a reasonable assessment of risk of anything (say the difference between jumping into the sea at Bells Beach and a local swimming pool) and b) an advanced society such as ours cannot educate man enough to be able to make these decisions based on the information presented to them.

It would, but the cases I've seen haven't gone that close; the Bellerini v. Shire of Berrigan was a case of diving into the Murray River, which has been there for tens of thousands of years, but when you read the reasons for the judgement it fits the snail in the bottle case.

 

Of course, if there was neglect or recklessness in the accident, it would be a different kettle of fish and I accept in these circumstances, there would be evidential difficulty, in which case a country may be at liberty - such a the UK - to presume fault of the pilot and therefore ensure the risk is always borne by a specific party and that the party is aware it is they their responsibility to insure for the risk regardless of the actual circumstances. However, in the absence of such specific direction/law from the state, then, as sad as the outcome of the hypothetical case would be and on the assumption there were no neglect, recklessness or legal compliance issue (e.g. to ensure adequate stopway was mowed through the trees), why should someone else be held responsible for what is, to a reasonable man, an obvious risk that on this case materialised?

Not only is negligence always required, but it must be PROVEN by the plaintiff, and many fail

 

Or has our own obligation to assess general risks to ourselves and insure against them been dispensed with?

We can only assess the risks based on our own knowledge; at one point four million Australians and forty million Americans a year were being hospitalised with food poisoning. How were they to tell, from sight, that the food they ate in the restaurant was contaminated with faeces? However there is a definition of contributory negligence, you can bet the defendant's lawyers are going to include that in their counter-claim.

 

DISCLAIMER

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. For legal advice you should always consult a lawyer, and I would recommending that you consult a public liability specialist lawyer.

I am a member of a couple of closed groups on facebook. The admin (group )i think has control over unacceptable posts and who can join the group. And its easy enough to follow a topic. Now let me say outright that i am not a big fan of facebook , but it does have its uses and good points. At the very least there is no software maintenance workload.There are already many aviation closed groups on facebook.

 

A big loss by going to facebook is loss of identity , but perhaps this can overcome by using existing imagery to get a bit of the original site ambience .

 

At our airfield we a young fella still at school, keen as mustard, his preferred comunication method is facebook. And i guess most new youth aviators will be the same.

 

Perhaps we could create a facebook closed group page for recreational flying and simply test it out. Would need 4 or 5 admins to approve new group members and veto inappropriate posts. Run it as a test in parrallel with this site for a year.

 

As to privacy i am not a troll but i dont use my real name or details on facebook, i use a cartoon name an alias , much the same as most of s do here on this forum . So privacy should be no issue.

 

Cant comment on how to do the shop side of things but facebook is commercial. Personally i use the shop. I go there first when i need to purchase aviation stuff . Dont always get what i need there but will buyif its available and priced right. Would not like to see that disappear. To me the shop is a valuable resource.

 

Happy new year. To you all

 

Brian

I've participated in a few facebook pages from low volume hardly moving historic pages, which are great for providing links and photos, to pages that moved so fast there was no way to absorb the thousands of opinions on any subject. The main issue I have is the moving wall; the viewport is so small that it becomes laborious just to see the information posted yesterday. While it is rapidly searchable if you know what to search for (e.g.someone's name), it's a very unreliable medium for something with a lot of technical interest, like flying. I know of three spinoff aviation groups; two died out after about twelve months due to the moving wall and not being able to keep a subject going, and the other became swamped with RPT, endless aircraft spotter photos, and blogs. This site also suffers from disappearing content syndrome, so the same subjects are sometimes discussed over and over again when the solution was found several years ago, but has seen the FB and website based discussions come and go, and still may be the optimum group discussion product.

 

 

They are calling for witness's and any videos/camera info. I'd be surprised if there wasn't any. It may well be very important in finding out why. We tend to think all planes have "black" box. recorder(s). "WE" being the general public.. Nev

They have the witness who described the turn, in reasonable detail, and there were quite a few boats around, and the departure point and final resting places are known, and the aircraft wreckage would appear to be recoverable, and the pilot's history will be available, so hopefully some pieces will come together.

 

 

deleted...start of a personal attack...mod

 

 

Is this fact or folk legend? It's not something that I'd heard before anyway.As I understood it, all the major factories stopped producing light singles due to the spurious judgement which found the manufacturer responsible for a collision between a high wing and a low wing (or perhaps one was a biplane), one on climb and the other on let-down. The finding was that the designs were defective because they didn't provide sufficient visibility in the direction of travel. The major manufacturers couldn't reasonably continue to produce those designs following that precedent.Can you point us to a reference to this Piper flight manual autodidact case perhaps? I've tried a number of search terms and not been able to find anything.

I don't know whether its fact or fiction but Product Liability was introduced in the US in the 1970's. It wasn't like our system, and one of the things the manufacturers hated was that lawyers could call in an expert witness, and if that witness could design a product which wouldn't have killed the person, the company was guilty.Freightliner had a case where a couple were driving their semi tractor home in the wet bobtail after a haul, and coming round a corner it slid off the road wrapped around a pole splitting the outboard fuel tank, and incinerating the couple. In court expert evidence was given that if the fuel tanks had been mounted between the chassis rails there would have been no split,, and the couple would have survived. The judge awarded $11 million penalty against White Motor Corp, and $10 million to the estate.

 

So the high wing argument may well have been correct.

 

Also, at that time Cessna and Piper were selling their aircraft as an alternative to car travel, greatly playing down the weather risk factor etc. so that one could also be true.

 

 

Is this fact or folk legend? It's not something that I'd heard before anyway.As I understood it, all the major factories stopped producing light singles due to the spurious judgement which found the manufacturer responsible for a collision between a high wing and a low wing (or perhaps one was a biplane), one on climb and the other on let-down. The finding was that the designs were defective because they didn't provide sufficient visibility in the direction of travel. The major manufacturers couldn't reasonably continue to produce those designs following that precedent.

Can you point us to a reference to this Piper flight manual autodidact case perhaps? I've tried a number of search terms and not been able to find anything.

I don't know whether its fact or fiction but Product Liability was introduced in the US in the 1970's. It wasn't like our system, and one of the things the manufacturers hated was that lawyers could call in an expert witness, and if that witness could design a product which wouldn't have killed the person, the company was guilty.

Freightliner had a case where a couple were driving their semi tractor home in the wet bobtail after a haul, and coming round a corner it slid off the road wrapped around a pole splitting the outboard fuel tank, and incinerating the couple. In court expert evidence was given that if the fuel tanks had been mounted between the chassis rails there would have been no split,, and the couple would have survived. The judge awarded $11 million penalty against White Motor Corp, and $10 million to the estate.

 

So the high wing argument may well have been correct.

 

Also, at that time Cessna and Piper were selling their aircraft as an alternative to car travel, greatly playing down the weather risk factor etc. so that one could also be true.

 

 

The problem is negligence is in the eye of the beholder.I presented a paper at an anaesthesia conference a few years back in which I outlined a study by a national anaesthetic training college.Essentially the study looked at a number of scenarios where anaesthetic complications lead to disasters.

 

The scenarios were presented to an expert panel and they were asked to decide on negligence or not. Only problem was that the scenarios were doubled up and the outcome changed. So the same scenario was modified slightly to hide that it was the same case as another. The outcome was however made opposite. If it was previously a bad outcome it was changed to a good outcome etc.

 

The panel of experts judged that 85% of the bad out come cases were as a result of negligence. But the same cases were only 15% negligent when there was a good outcome. 85% of cases were considered to be within the standard of care and that things go wrong despite the best of care.

 

As for under insurance that's a lot harder to predict what you might need than you might think. - "Blue Sky " claims (ie: basically ridiculously high claims for multi millions) are not unexpected these days if a young person requires a full life of full time care. Or if you have to make up for lost income of a promising young surgeon you would be looking at about a million per year - very easy to go well over the 5 or 10 million that most general aviation insurances cover.

You can never trust academics Jaba-who; they start out with good intentions. but rarely have their feet on the ground.If you provide the solution with the question, (I was going to say 90), but 85% will reverse calculate to get the correct answer.

 

That was a Delphi exercise, were whoever was conducting the exercise wanted to lead the participants to the answer.

 

I was about to give you a simple example, but in medicine the outcomes aren't as predictable as they are in, say engineering, where you could ask: "You're running very late, and the oil cap is missing, nowhere to be found; do you take off?" In that case the question relates to a reasonably forseeable risk. The answer should be 100% no, but if you add the two options (a) "nothing happens" and (b) "oil will be sucked out and over the screen and you will crash", you'll get your 85/25 mix.

 

We first insured race tracks for $5 million around 1984, but by 1988 they were on $10 million, so I think that would be way too light now.

 

 

The problem is negligence is in the eye of the beholder.I presented a paper at an anaesthesia conference a few years back in which I outlined a study by a national anaesthetic training college.

Essentially the study looked at a number of scenarios where anaesthetic complications lead to disasters.

 

The scenarios were presented to an expert panel and they were asked to decide on negligence or not. Only problem was that the scenarios were doubled up and the outcome changed. So the same scenario was modified slightly to hide that it was the same case as another. The outcome was however made opposite. If it was previously a bad outcome it was changed to a good outcome etc.

 

The panel of experts judged that 85% of the bad out come cases were as a result of negligence. But the same cases were only 15% negligent when there was a good outcome. 85% of cases were considered to be within the standard of care and that things go wrong despite the best of care.

 

As for under insurance that's a lot harder to predict what you might need than you might think. - "Blue Sky " claims (ie: basically ridiculously high claims for multi millions) are not unexpected these days if a young person requires a full life of full time care. Or if you have to make up for lost income of a promising young surgeon you would be looking at about a million per year - very easy to go well over the 5 or 10 million that most general aviation insurances cover.

You can never trust academics Jaba-who; they start out with good intentions. but rarely have their feet on the ground.

If you provide the solution with the question, (I was going to say 90), but 85% will reverse calculate to get the correct answer.

 

That was a Delphi exercise, were whoever was conducting the exercise wanted to lead the participants to the answer.

 

I was about to give you a simple example, but in medicine the outcomes aren't as predictable as they are in, say engineering, where you could ask: "You're running very late, and the oil cap is missing, nowhere to be found; do you take off?" In that case the question relates to a reasonably forseeable risk. The answer should be 100% no, but if you add the two options (a) "nothing happens" and (b) "oil will be sucked out and over the screen and you will crash", you'll get your 85/25 mix.

 

We first insured race tracks for $5 million around 1984, but by 1988 they were on $10 million, so I think that would be way too light now.

 

 

The difference with taking only family is that - worst case scenario and the whole family perishes there is no estate left to sue my estate. And if they survive but need care then it comes out of my insurance and my estate to whom I would have been leaving it anyway.Last thing I want is to have a prang and then have a passengers estate sue for psychological loss ( as did the families of the skydiver Cessna 206 a few years ago and I think they won) or passenger sue for future costs of care and then my family loses it all and my family is left destitute while a passenger or their family get my estate.

Something else that most people are not aware of is that when they step into an aircraft that is not fixed route advertised rpt then their own life insurance is almost always invalid. So that leaves the injured party or the family left behind reliant on seeing to have any money to cover medical costs, care etc etc.

 

The other thing pilots should be aware is that if a passenger dies or loses their income then the estate can make claims based on loss of future earnings of that person. So if you take a doctor or a lawyer flying then have the prang the likelihood is that the claim for loss of future earnings will be huge. It may well be greater than your insurance payout even if the insurers payout without a quibble. If the payout falls short you or your estate has to make it up. If you don't have it they can garnishee your future income.

 

All very scary but that's the way it's become.

 

Sadly when an accident happens the victim will usually try to blame someone.

Well victim is the word; it all starts with someone being negligent, otherwise its a non-issue.Your family only loses it all if you are under-insured. Certainly some of the insurance figures bandied around on here are under by millions, which curious since the premiums, while serious money, don't dominate the total cost of flying.