public liability for working at airports

[barronsparks]

We are electricians and have been working at a local airport for the past 4 years. We have just renewed our insurances and (shock horror!) our Ins. Co. have now told us that our public liability insurance does not cover us for working at airports - apparently once you enter the perimeter fence you are classed as airside and thereby not covered by insurance. The only thing they could offer is that if we are asked to do a job at the airport we would have to ring them first and then they would consider if they could insure us on a job by job basis. As we do quite a bit of work there, including breakdown work and lots of urgent small jobs this would be totally impractical!

Has anyone else heard of this and know of any insurance companies who would cover us for airports? We can't be the only company around who does work at airports, someone must know how to get round this problem.

 

[Mw Roofline]

I didn't know about the airside thing but we won a contract at B'ham airport and we had to increase our public liability to something stupid like 50 mil

A friend of mine has regular fitting work at heathrow, i'll ask him for you.

 

[dave.m]

When I was the Refuelling Supervisor at Blackpool Airport as long ago as 1988, our third party liability for the refuelling bowsers was about £60m then.
Bump into an engine hanging under the wing of a jet and £50m wouldn't really go a long way in repairing it and covering lease aircraft whilst it is off-line.

 

[holmslaw]

I would of thought that any work you do would follow a very strict risk assessment procedure and permit to work system fully supervised by the airport operators.

Would'nt this reduce your liability?

Also approach the airport operator to see if you can be covered by their insurance, on the basis that you only carry out work with their full approval and permission.

 

[fender]

I was the project manager for the company that built the seafood bars, airside at Gatwick and Heathrow.

That was over 10 years ago and even then we had to have liability insurance of 10 million!

 

[Sylvan Tieger]

I was the project manager for the company that built the seafood bars, airside at Gatwick and Heathrow.

That was over 10 years ago and even then we had to have liability insurance of 10 million!

Working Kennedy air port about 10 years ago we had to take a rider on the already 3 million policy and increase it to 15 million.

That of course had to be figured in the pricing.

Today I cannot imagine what the insurance would be with so many law firms looking to sue