AMA Is Not Self Insured

[Dick Pacini]

There was a recent discussion about AMA insurance and how much of a loss could they withstand.  I contacted AMA and asked who their carrier was.  Here is their reply:

"Thank you for contacting us. The insuring company for the liability policy is Westchester Surplus Lines Insurance Company, which is a part of ACE USA."

[Dick Pacini]

This was my inquiry:

"Dear friends at AMA,

A recent discussion among modelers brought up a question of the AMA liability insurance.

Is AMA insurance self funded or is it underwritten by an established insurer?  The 2.5 mil liability is substantial but how many claims could the AMA sustain should a catastrophic accident involving many people occur?  How well are you backed financially for insuring?

Thank you for any information you can provide.


Best regards,


Richard A Pacini
AMA# 62221"

[Dick Pacini]

I thought this information would create a discussion, since most conversations about the plus or minus of AMA membership usually involve the insurance angle.

[Steve Helmick]

For what it's worth, the bass fishing club I used to belong to had liability insurance and also required that we have liability insurance on our boats. The club did not belong to any organization (like B.A.S.S.) through which their liability insurance was arranged for.

This tells me that there are ways to get insurance for a break-away organization, if somebody wanted to do it. The problem remains that if other contest sponsors require AMA membership, that pretty much puts and end to it.  Steve

[Target]

Didn't someone try to overthrow the AMA years ago?
I thought I read that somewhere back a ways.
I'm not as old as some of you codgers, so it might have been before I started flying.
No disrespect intended...

Regards,
Chris "young" Behm
Yep, just turned 52!

[Mike Griffin]

Didn't someone try to overthrow the AMA years ago?
I thought I read that somewhere back a ways.
I'm not as old as some of you codgers, so it might have been before I started flying.
No disrespect intended...

Regards,
Chris "young" Behm
Yep, just turned 52!

Yeah

LMAO....yeah Chris it was a coup d'état.  Back in ought two....

Mike

[Target]

That's right before I got heavily back into flying....
What the Heck was the name of that outfit? Can't quite remember.

[Brett Buck]

That's right before I got heavily back into flying....
What the Heck was the name of that outfit? Can't quite remember.

  Sport Fliers Association, AKA SFA.  No one on either side of that one exactly distinguished themselves. It was my opinion that the AMA was substantially less egregious than the SFA. From what I can gather, the SFA may have started off with a decent goal, but appeared to deviate pretty quickly. The end was very ugly indeed, with the SFA attempting to dodge some court orders by "disbanding" the Sport Fliers Association, only to form, immediately, the Sport Fliers of America, with all the same people and assets. Not surprisingly, the judge took a dim view of that.

    If you are looking into what materially fouled up the plan, it was more-or-less that the AMA would not mutually recognize SFA in terms of flying sites, mostly public flying sites, by requiring all pilots at the site be AMA members. SFA countered that this was a monopoly, or something like that.

   There was A LOT more to it in terms of the mutual flinging of a suspicious brown substance, but I think the above is the one more relevant to this issue.  

   BTW, the AMA went self-insured shortly after the Joe Armistead incident - and then required you to sign the "I won't sue the AMA" waiver. But as noted, since then, they went with an external agency since then. It's been like that for a pretty good long time now. That doesn't really change the problem, first big claim and they will drop AMA or raise the premiums to the extent that it is no longer viable.

    Brett

p.s. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, one of the reasons that started the drive towards a separate organization was complaints that the AMA wasting too much time and money on competition, and in particular, the NATs, and not enough on the era's equivalent of drone/ARF/toy pilots.

[Sean McEntee]

 

... one of the reasons that started the drive towards a separate organization was complaints that the AMA wasting too much time and money on competition, and in particular, the NATs, and not enough on the era's equivalent of drone/ARF/toy pilots.

Fascinating...   -Spock

  My question is, if CL/FF flyers are such a minority, and so little attention is paid to those disciplines of modeling by the AMA, then why doesn't the AMA allow groups to be formed IOT better support their own interests?

[Brett Buck]

Fascinating...   -Spock

  My question is, if CL/FF flyers are such a minority, and so little attention is paid to those disciplines of modeling by the AMA, then why doesn't the AMA allow groups to be formed IOT better support their own interests?

   I am not sure that they would object too strenuously. The issue then becomes acquiring insurance for a tiny risk pool, how much it costs, then finding flying sites that are not already covered by AMA insurance and thus permit you to fly legally with your alternative insurance carrier. This last bit was, I believe, the issue that led to the SFA lawsuit with the AMA, or at least one of them.

   The SFA appeared at points to be formed almost for the sole purpose of attempting to punish or "get" the AMA, and it certainly appears that some people were involved primarily for that purpose. At the end, however, the SFA ended up having to pay the AMA for one reason or another, and then attempted to dodge the liabilty with pretty transparent and frankly ludicrous trickery.

  I would suggest this thread as a reference:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/ama-discussions-74/10710960-whatever-happened-sports-flyers-association.html

   Anything you read involves some perspective but this thread more-or-less corresponds to the stories I heard on the topic. It was not pretty no matter how you look at it, however.

    Brett

[Mike Griffin]

Hi Brett,

The events you have related to us about the rise and fall of SFA took place during the years I was out of the hobby so this is all very interesting to me as a part of our history.  From what I can gather from what you have explained, the SFA was trying to encompass all genres of model flying, i.e. FF, CL, RC etc,  

My question is, has there ever been an attempt to form an organization just for the control line community that would offer similar benefits but exclusively for the stunt and sport flyers who only fly control line models.  Kind of like a PAMPA on steroids I guess?  

Thank you for the input.

Mike

[Brett Buck]

The events you have related to us about the rise and fall of SFA took place during the years I was out of the hobby so this is all very interesting to me as a part of our history.  From what I can gather from what you have explained, the SFA was trying to encompass all genres of model flying, i.e. FF, CL, RC etc,

  I would emphasize that I got almost everything second-hand, aside from the details of some of the court rulings, and the various proclamations from the AMA. There was A LOT more to it that what I describe and I am far from an expert (and certainly only a spectator).

    As far as I know (which could be wrong), SFA was only about RC sport fliers, and nothing else. They may have accepted CL and FF members but I would have expected them to get even less attention than they do in the AMA. Reality is that CL and FF (which is largely about the competition fliers) gets disproportionate attention from the AMA. The SFA was a breakaway group that among other things, was upset about all the attention and money spent on competition instead of the "real fliers", that is, the hordes of RC sport fliers.  The money spent on the NATs, particularly the "travelling" NATs, was always a sticking point. What else might have been behind it is speculation at best.

My question is, has there ever been an attempt to form an organization just for the control line community that would offer similar benefits but exclusively for the stunt and sport flyers who only fly control line models.  Kind of like a PAMPA on steroids I guess?  

     Given that several attempts and "All CL" newsletters have failed, I would be surprised if you could get an entire viable separate organization to work. I think these efforts have failed for a variety of reasons, but one of which is that no one group cared anything about the others. Lack of a spark plug and tireless worker like Tom Morris (who doesn't get NEARLY enough credit for PAMPA's success) would likely cause such an organization to fail, too. I also believe people would have to put aside whatever simmering resentment there might be over (I'll just say it)  PAMPA and Stunt's success while other categories have languished or gone on life support. I could be wrong, of course.

   But the biggest problem by far would be getting a viable separate insurance underwriter that would insure maybe 3000 people in what the record shows is a very high risk group.

    My guess is that a separate group, presumably for CL and FF, and geared toward competition, is not going to work out. Could be wrong, of course. For sure, you need a Tom Morris type who would put remarkable energy into it for far longer (say, 10 years) than most people would be willing/able to do.

    Brett

[Mike Griffin]

Thank you for answering my question Brett.  It was just a thought I had.

Mike

[frank williams]

Back in the late 80's when the Houston Area Model Council Inc. (HAMCI) was meeting regularly to administer the operation of Scobee Field in Houston, we had a presentation by one of the SFA high up reps.  As I recall (correct me here Bill Lee) , but the SFA would not insure controlline flyers, only the RC flyers.  Their reason was that, "there wasn't enough litigation data on controlline flying". For that reason they said that they didn't know how to rate us.  BS is what I thought, I don't know why they didn't want to deal with CL, but that couldn't be right.