Foreflight and Aircraft insurance survey

[Rizvon]

Got an email from Foreflight yesterday requesting aircraft insurance documents, I suppose to collate insurance rates and pilot times and flying habits. I don't know if I want to put my info out there. Thoughts?

[Rick Junkin]

The email says you can redact all of your PII if you want, although they do want your age. Basically they’re looking for your age, qualifications, experience level, coverage details and the premium you pay. I like the concept and will participate.

[Schllc]

Sounds like they may be gearing up to enter the market. 
or sell the data to the market…

[midlifeflyer]

I have not received one. Do they say why? 

[Rick Junkin]

From the email:

 

"We’re currently researching the cost of aircraft insurance to understand how it varies from pilot to pilot. Eventually, we’d like to provide a way for pilots to compare their insurance premium against the average so they can see if they’re getting a good deal or not."

 

They offer a one month extension of my current Foreflight subscription for my insurance data. That offer is only good for the original email recipient so if you subscribe to Foreflight and you'd like to participate look for the email.

[IvanP]

I am always apprehensive of soliciations for personal data under the guise of "research" to provide me with a better deal on anything. My admittedly biased opinion is that this is nothing by a data collection effort for resale to whoever wants to buy it. I respectfully decline to share more data than what is necessary. 

[hammdo]

Feel the same was — they even note it can go to 3rd parties. Thus the free month - you were compensated and gave the the rights for them to sell…

-Don

[201er]

You can go around comparing with other guys or you can have @Parker_Woodruff get you the best rate and service.

[PeteMc]

On 9/20/2024 at 7:03 AM, midlifeflyer said:

I have not received one. Do they say why? 

I think it was a random selection.  I don't think all of their users did or will get the email.

 

[GeeBee]

BIG data. There is a market for it. 
 

What Foreflight is attempting to do is correlate flying data to insurance rates and thus to loss rates. This is not new. Car companies have been selling data from their premium services like OnStar to insurance companies. Remember, ForeFlight is Boeing, and Boeing is into BIG data.

 

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1144138_gm-sued-for-selling-info-of-16-million-drivers-to-insurance-companies

 

Read the last paragraph 

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2023-06-16/boeing-global-services-charts-data-solutions-path

[Parker_Woodruff]

I see this playing out one of a few ways:

- ForeFlight partners with an agency and ends up marketing insurance through its app, earning a royalty.

- ForeFlight launches an Avemco-style direct program or gets a program set up with an insurer that's marketed through an agency (either owned by Boeing or a third party and they make a royalty).

- ForeFlight sells advertising space agency(ies)

- It becomes merely a service within the app.

I don't think they're asking for enough data for a comparison product to be usable to a typical Foreflight user right now unless they can get logbook data with tail numbers.  If it's purely for the end user to compare and see if they're getting a good deal, this is just going to be a lot of explaining, fruitless shopping when they don't actually find a better deal, etc.

[GeeBee]

The data they gather is not enough, but mesh it with other data and bazinga. 
 

Other data sources include the flight plan you file…through Foreflight’s servers I might add. Correlate this to “did the pilot get a complete briefing?”. Correlate flight paths and altitude from ADSB or Flight Aware, correlate that to how much fuel you purchase from th QT terminals, correlate it all to FICO scores. You see where it goes. Then Boeing ties it up in a nice little package and sells it to the underwriters. In big data business, it is not just the innocuous info you give them, it is how they leverage it with other databases.