UAS News Podcast — 2014-06-20
Audio not available on SoundCloud — full transcript below.
Transcript
And welcome to the next installment of the SOS News Podcast Series where we interview and discuss the news and applications relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. As always, I'm your program host, Patrick Egan. Let's say hello and welcome to our co-host, Mr. Gene Robinson.
Hello, Patrick. How are you, sir?
I'm finally back in Texas for a little bit, so I'm kind of happy to be sitting in one spot for a while. Happy to be back in Texas. That's good. At least somebody is telling me, oh, I'm teasing.
Texas is great. So, you know, there's been a lot of stuff going on. You know, we've been busy. People have been asking, you know, we've been getting phone calls.
They're like, yeah, what's up with the podcast? How come you got it?
And it's like, you know, we're trying to nail it all down here. It's tough, but, you know, we're working it. Anyway, moving ahead on this podcast, this is actually number 77. What's in the news that you've been catching this week, Gene?
What have you been looking at? Well, first off, I think some of our listeners out there know that my passion has been searching rescue for a long time. And there's an active case working right now as we speak. It's in California.
It's getting media attention. It's for a firefighter who's been missing since Sunday. And I got the word this morning that they are using the Mandarine now in that effort. And I've got to say I wholeheartedly concur with this, and I think that they're doing the right thing to get it out there.
I know that it's a proven asset and know that it works. I want to, and I think everybody at SUAS News wants to express their prayers and hopes for that firefighter and his family. And I think that we really, you know, want to send as much good luck and sincere God's seed to the boots on the ground and the aviators who are aiding that curtain. Here's hoping that that comes to a happy conclusion.
I don't know if I would agree with that. Now, kind of on that note, and I don't know if you can talk about this, but, you know, it's kind of interesting. A lot of this stuff is making us now, and I have not seen any talk of a COLA or, you know, FAA or anything along that with that story, which would be a bummer, but it's usually part of the course. Can you talk about anything that's going on with the Texas Ecology Appeal?
Oh, okay. No, there's, of course, the judicial system has its own pace, and it's in PC that we're going through. So there's a little bit of a slow pace at it, unfortunately, because they've got such a huge caseload. But we've responded to their motion to dismiss, and we have gone back to, again, ask for a stay, and the stay meaning that, you know, I don't have to cease and desist, and I can go out and I can assist in searching rescues using unmanned aircraft again.
So that has gone out, and they'll get to mull it over for a couple of weeks, and they'll respond. And then from there, we're, you know, just waiting for the court to make a decision based on the responses that have been sent in. So things are moving along. You never know which way they're going to go.
It's not even as exciting as a horse race, so you just kind of have to watch and just wait to what the next response is going to be, and hopefully it'll go in our favor, and we'll just have to wait and see in the next couple weeks and see what happens. Okay. Well, you know, of course we've got our fingers and toes crossed on that. I mean, just as you kind of stated here in the opening, it's a good application, and these people are out here using it, and it'd be nice if you find missing persons.
I think it's all good. So, you know, that leads into my next question for you, Gene. Tell us about the Saw Road Show. Where are you at?
I know that you were on the road. Can you talk about what you were doing?
Sure. You know, we do talk a lot about SAR, but interestingly enough, I was in New Hampshire last week on the East Coast and doing some training out there, and they've got a very capable robot system out there that they're using to... And this was a new one on me, and I've got to tell you, it was kind of surprising, but they're doing tick research. Like deer tick?
Not exactly deer tick. I did not know this, but New England has apparently had an outbreak of Lyme disease, which if you're a hunter and you go out into the field, you know about Lyme disease. You need to be very careful with ticks. And that's what they're researching.
And we were out there, and we went through all the training, and we looked at some of the areas that they were going to fly and walk around, and they said, when we walked out, they were like, okay, check yourself for ticks, and I'll be darned. But then on my pants leg, what did I have?
A tick sucker. And then I itched for the rest of the day. You know, you just never know what an unmanned aircraft is going to be able to do next, and I'm surprised at the resourcefulness of people. Yeah, and that always, I mean, the different fields that you run into, and people are like, hey, I'm using it for, you know, you're like, wow, okay.
And then you learn all about that, either that like, you know, scientific work that's being done, or about certain animals, or you know, geology, or climate change, or it just blows me away. But you know, that is, I've always said that with podcasts, you get scientists on there, getting spooled up, and they go nuts on what their, you know, passion is, and you learn all this. It's really interesting. I just, it's just, I'm floored all the time.
It's great. But that's good, let me get more of that. I don't know if you saw that new ruling that came out from the FAA. I believe I sent you a copy about that, about public universities being able to pay people to use, do studies with least, I mean, aircraft should make things easier for people to maybe partner with public universities.
Is that the way you read it? I thought it was closing a loophole that kept people from actually doing that sort of work. I thought it was the other way, myself. I'll reread that, just to spare time.
I thought this was very similar to the restricted airspace use. You know, they closed that loophole with the restricted airspace on military air bases. Right, restricted in the warring, what's going on?
Yeah, you can't go out there, or a company can't go out there, and you know, as a full-profit use military restricted airspace to fly their unmanned aircraft. And I thought the university document that we just got was similarly closing that loophole as well. I don't know, I'm flabbergasted. It's public and private aircraft, and then that's the concern.
Well, I'll have to get that one reread. I've been a little busy. A lot of different stuff going on here. I'm trying to launch a COTS technology readiness level study kind of on my own to get an independent read on what the current commercial systems are out there.
I get calls every day from different people in different industries that are asking for recommendations for sensors and unmanned aircraft. And I'm really hesitant to say, oh, use this system if I have never seen it or flown it or anything like that, because I've been embarrassed a couple of times. We laugh about the drone dealer thing, but I do ride around with drones in the trunk of the Prius, and we've had instances where I've pulled the drone out of the trunk of the Prius, and it didn't work. That's all it did.
Yeah, but on the other hand, it's not my product, but you know, I've learned my lesson on that one. Also, we're going to have a revised advocacy plan. You know, that one is overwhelming. All of this stuff is like, you know, solid full-time work.
But I think that, you know, we've got to get on it. There was an AIAA meeting in Atlanta this week, and they were, the administrator is pretty much guaranteed that they're going to drop that NPRN. We'll probably be right after the election. And as we know, we'll be into the Thanksgiving and the Christmas thing, and we'll be moving into New Year's and the rest of that.
I think the Buddhists call it, it's like the Wheel of Suffering. And we'll be going through that again. First quarter?
Yeah, first quarter Wheel of Suffering. And I already know I'm not going to like that, the ASTM thing. Nobody's really, everybody's asleep at the switch on that one with the mill standard 3001 manuals and the ISO-like certification and quality assurance. Some people say it's great.
I say it's a little too onerous. It goes something more like the home bill thing or something along those lines. Also, trying to motivate AUVSI to move forward, and that is, that's proving to be damn near impossible. I'm just very happy with the status quo.
And for some reason, folks, there are two camps on that. One camp where I've hit from the community where people are like, you need to push harder. And the other camp from AUVSI that does not want to be pushed at all and is not happy with me. I know that's surprising.
Probably news to some. But I'm just one of the ways in other five years and flounder around and find direction and all the rest of that. You either keep gumming or abdicate your position. There's 30, people talk about reasons.
There's 31 reasons in Europe, 31 countries where you can fly legally. There's over 1,300 commercial certificate operators or let's say allowed operators in Europe. There's enforcement of land. There's a path to work. 14,000 plus operators in Japan.
It's beyond embarrassing that we can't do anything in this country. What do we got now?
It's kind of funny. People, oh, you know, you saw probably Motley Fool and all the rest of that. We had a commercial system flying over land. SAA has authorized that.
They gave it their blessing. And, you know, we all know it was their environment's product. There's really only two of the limited type certifications, which is for Institute ScanEagle and the AeroViron at Raven. It is surprising how many people came, I'm sorry, not really, how many people come up to me and said, wait a minute, I didn't know that.
I thought it was open to everyone. And I just laugh and say, well, that's what I've been bitching about for the last five years. But, you know, it all comes to fruition. Some people think, oh, he's a malcontent, he's a crack, blah, blah, blah.
I've been calling all of this for years. People, I guess it was just too obscure. I don't know. Anyway, that's what I've been working on.
But today's show, the main gist of today's show is about commercial and manned aircraft system insurance or ARPES insurance. And people ask about that all the time. Oh, you know, we need to have insurance. You know, before this industry could take off, we have to have insurance.
Well, you know, insurance is here, it's available. I mean, of course, there's this criteria. And today's guest, Mr. Terry Miller, Transport Risk Management, is going to talk to us about insurance, business insurance for manned aircraft systems.
Hello, Terry. Hi, Patrick. I appreciate you having me here today. Hey, no problem.
We are glad to have you here. This is something that, you know, I keep espousing to people that if you're going to be in business, you have to have liability insurance if you like your stuff. You know, don't like your stuff. You know, that's a different story.
But besides all of that, Terry, could you please introduce yourself to the audience, the background, and then how you became involved with unmanned aircraft systems? Yeah, absolutely. Hi, I'm the president of a company called Transport Risk Management. We're an aviation and aerospace insurance specialist.
So we deal only in the aviation and aerospace insurance markets. We insure everything from BGI Phantoms to 747s. And we provide limits on those risks, liability limits, up to a billion dollars and over, and hull values up to up into the 50s. And we've got, I think, the highest hull value we insure here is about 140 million.
And we're also, I believe, the largest insurer of aerial film production in the United States. And our film production clients actually came to us asking for help because they wanted to use UAS in the production of films and commercials and aerial photography. And in order for us to extend coverage over the production, the operators had to have coverage as well. So we began going to our underwriters around the world and developing capacity and policy forms that could provide coverage to those operators in order for our film clients to start using UAS.
From there, I became very interested and it just grew. And we've talked before offline that I know that you're a real proponent of technology and having this aviation base, I mean do you see this as a natural progression, kind of the future of aviation, is that why you kind of dove into this?
There's absolutely no question about it. The aviation insurance policy form is different from virtually any other type of policy form out there. In fact, it goes all the way back to the main flowers covered under the same policy form. And then through shipping, through autos, through trains, transportation goes a natural.
The FAA's contention that UAS falls under their control puts it into our space. And because they do fly, there's virtually, there's very little that has to be changed in aviation insurance policy to accommodate coverage for UAS. So it fits perfectly. We have capacity around the world.
Our underwriters are interested in it. And we have right now seven underwriters who, with our help, have developed specialty policy forms and endorsements to cover UAS. So it is a natural fit. I agree.
And so the types of coverage, I mean you have liability, you have, you know, you have comprehensive. What types of coverage are available to, let's say, the end user?
Virtually all insurance policies outside of aviation exclude aviation use, period. Homeowners, commercial policies, business policies. In turn, the aviation insurance policy has to provide very broad coverage because all other insurance excludes it. So the aviation insurance policy does provide commercial coverages, general liability coverages, and, you know, for specified uses and substantial limits that can essentially cover all exposures of an aviation operator.
In turn, we can extend that to UAS. We can ensure all physical damage from loss to the aircraft itself and third-party legal liability up into the hundreds of millions of dollars. So today we're insuring hulls. I believe the highest hull value that we're insuring today is about 1.1 million.
And the highest liability limit we're providing on UAS is 50 million. And that includes hull physical damage. That includes sales and demonstration of the aircraft. That includes product liability for the production of the aircraft.
And that's third-party legal liability for operating in the airspace. So it's a very broad, all-encompassing type of coverage. And we can provide that to virtually any operator that meets our criteria. And what about, you know, payloads?
You know, a lot of these, some of the stuff that you talked about, you know, these, like, say, for film production, someone might be flying a red and there's about 30 grand plus lenses, yeah, yeah, or whatever. Can I get insurance to cover these sensors?
There's absolutely nothing new about this to us in aviation. We've been insuring these types of operations for decades, probably a century at this point. Aerial film production, any type of aerial sensing. We have cloud seating.
We have aerial photo, aerial filming. It's been going on for years and years and years. We've been insuring them for years and years and years. We can insure the payload.
We can insure spares. We can insure extra equipment, multiple sensors, whether it's a set of infrared and photographic sensors or even the gimbal. So we insure the aircraft as one part of the system. We insure the gimbal.
We insure the payload. And many times, a film production, for example, it's common for a production company to want to use the same sensor, the same camera that they've been using for other shots in order to maintain continuity, which means that we have to insure that for short-term use, maybe a day, maybe three days. But we can accommodate that. We can charge additional premium.
They can lease or rent the camera or even a non-owned camera. And we can insure that for physical damage. We can also insure non-owned liability. So it's one of the biggest exposures in aviation.
A party that hires a third party to operate a UAS or an aircraft has liability for hiring that operator. It falls under a category called negligent referral or negligent hiring of the operator. So we can provide that non-owned coverage to the third party who wants to hire an operator. We can insure a home-built UAS or one that's designed in a garage for product liability for the sale of that aircraft.
It may be a one-off, but you can sell it and it will carry product liability going forward. All of these are very, very important to protecting the safety of the public and helping to grow this industry, this UAS industry. We can insure products. We can insure operators.
And we can help develop the technology and safely grow the industry. Well, I agree with that. I mean, you know, I've always been the proponent of insurance. It shows a certain responsibility as a sector.
You know, you're hitting on some other types of coverage that I didn't even think were really available. And that's why we have you on the show to discuss all of that. But, you know, I don't think people think about this one. People know I bought it from Joe Blow and then Joe Blow kind of put some stuff on it.
And then, you know, I put stuff on it and then I sold it to Johnny over here and he flew off and he had a good time. But thank God we haven't had really any real incident where there's kind of a liability change. But I think that all these people are people here in this community need to think about this and think, you know, get educated on this. And that was, you know, one of the, again, one of the reasons we want to have you on.
Now, can you tell us, and when you touched on some of the business applications that you're writing policies for, of course, so on the television, and then you talked a little bit about cloud seeding and some other things. But I know, you know, I know there are other industries out there and I know there's some statistics, you know, of how many policies you've written. Can you talk about some of the business applications?
Absolutely. What we're writing today, and this means that this is on the books, we have policies in place, is we have coverage for fire and rescue. We have traffic control, accident assistance, that type of thing. Today we're ensuring agriculture to, by and large, agriculture is the largest use that we're ensuring today.
It's probably just over 50% of every policy we're writing. We're ensuring that, you know, and that includes conservation, not just agriculture, but the use of UAFs, including the increase of yield, also allows us to go out and help develop a means for conserving our soil, water, greenhouse gases, reducing greenhouse gases. It's, you know, it's overlapping. It's just like unpeeling an onion.
We're doing construction. We're doing bridge inspection today. We're doing pipeline, power line patrol today. You know, and as we discussed, we've got railroad and highway maintenance.
We have, we ensure a fleet of UAFs that right now are monitoring railroad in remote areas, mining, carrying sensors to help discover, particularly Mali's dam, and also recreational, national forest areas, and of course movies, videography, news gathering is big, and then real estate. There are many, many other uses out there that we're seeing interest in. One is tracking, you know, nuclear contamination, fish spotting, things like that. We are currently ensuring those, not because we wouldn't, just because we haven't had the opportunity.
But the rest of those uses that I've listed, we do have policies in force. The exact number of policies today, last week, last Friday I ran a report. We had just crossed through 450 commercial policies, bound in place, and we have 450 renewals coming up in the 12th, the next 12 months. Prior to that, the year prior, we were at 100.
The year prior to that, we were at zero. That should be a huge indicator, number one, that it doesn't mean that those aircraft were not out there operating. It meant that now these operators, that they have access to insurance, are willing to place insurance. Not only that, but insurance isn't the most exciting process in the world, you know, the wheel of pain, where we're going to lay down some criteria.
We're going to have requirements, and we're going to ask them to verify it and fill out forms. So the people that go through this, these operators are genuinely, they're not buying a piece of paper, they're buying coverage. And we have seven insurance companies today that are writing these broad aviation policies. It's a huge amount of capacity, pricing is competitive, and probably more competitive than it's ever been today.
Well, you know, I was going to attribute those, never see you being a selling machine. Why?
Why are we generally buried? I have nothing to say, but this is a product that sells itself. Well, hey, you know, it's good to be in an industry that, you know, where the product's selling itself, believe me. You know, and it's interesting that you talked about some of these other applications, because people are always asking, well, what are the applications?
You know, and I'm like, well, you know, we just have to hold on until you happen. So, my point on that, guys, is you're willing to listen to any application for possible coverage. Is that what you're saying?
Absolutely. Any type of aircraft for any use. Okay, and you know, we're, you know, 30 minutes happens fast. I want to get this one for sure, because I get this question a lot.
You know, what is the criteria for coverage? You had somebody some coverage. What's the criteria?
Let's talk about that. There are three primary things, same exact criteria, same process we use on manned aircraft. One, what is the culture of the operator?
What's their attitude towards safety? What's their attitude towards training?
What's their attitude towards maintenance and the build of their aircraft? Two, is the aircraft airworthy?
Three, are they operating it in a professional and safe manner in an area and in an industry that we view as insurable? So, those are really the criteria. Are they willing to get training?
Is the aircraft airworthy? Is the pilot a professional?
That's really what it comes down to. And so, you know, that's interesting. So you do that when you're talking to someone on the phone. You basically interview them.
That's correct. We do it, we question them, and it goes back and forth. Today, the biggest problem we have is lack of training and a lack of being able to confirm that an aircraft is airworthy, whether it's a manufactured aircraft or whether it's a home-built. The risk management program for most manufacturers up to this point sees the event will run through the hills, but that's not going to work for integration.
And we're trying to find manufacturers who will stand behind their products, put a number on their product. We want to be able to determine airworthiness, whether it's home-built, manufactured, and we want pilots to be trained and understand the environment they're working in. All of those are huge opportunities for the right people. Thanks.
Well, I agree with that. Gene, you got something you'd like to add?
No, that's an excellent approach to this. I like the way that you're talking to your secretary. And I think I'm going to be getting in contact with you because I believe you've covered a lot of our time at both parties, but we've got a lot of them we need to talk about. So that's excellent.
Yeah, I like your criteria. Now, we're almost out of time, but I'm going to run along on this because I think it's important and I'm liking where this is going. Another question that I get all the time, Terry, because there were other companies that were writing policies, and people were saying, okay, well, this is a big question. Okay, so the FAA says that this is against their policy, and no insurance company is going to pay a claim.
Could you speak to that and maybe find clear up of the confusion on that? Aviation insurance has not excluded FAA violations for more than 40 years. We in the aviation insurance industry work with the FAA every day. I work with them every single day of every week that I'm in this business.
My background is aviation. My degree is in aviation safety and action investigation. We cannot use FAA data after a loss because FAA or NPSB. And like so, in turn, we have to run our own investigations.
We have to develop our own loss data. So an FAR violation, a manned aircraft, here's an example. It's almost impossible for a manned aircraft to have a loss while in motion under its own power without violating a federal aviation regulation. We still pay the claim.
Likewise, the FARs, someone could be operating legally, but the insurance policy may not cover the use. For example, a helicopter that carries people from point A to point B is the insured use. If they're out doing long line or logging and they have a loss, then maybe legally operating under the FARs, but it would not be a covered loss under the insurance policy. So what we do is we name the approved and insured uses under the policy.
For example, commercial or aerial photo, aerial filming for hire. That is the covered use under the policy. There's no exclusion that applies to that use. If a loss occurs while the aircraft's being used for aerial photo, aerial filming for hire, the claim will be covered.
We've had 22 claims in the last almost 24 months, 23 months. Every single claim has been paid. We've never denied a claim. So this is another reason why the aviation insurance industry is uniquely qualified and positioned to write UAS.
We're used to working with the FAA, with the NTSB. We're used to those regulations. We're used to that environment and our policies are written appropriately. UAS, there's absolutely no difference.
Okay, well, I think that's going to clear up a lot of confusion because people keep asking that question. The other thing I wanted to give you was an opportunity to, if people want more information or interested in getting coverage, would you please give us the transport risk management website and YouTube slideshow, Twitter, contact info, whatever you would like, however you'd like people to get in touch with you. Absolutely, thank you. They can visit us on the web at transportrisk.com.
We're very active on Facebook, Facebook forward slash UAV insurance. And Twitter is at UAS insurance. Any of those will get them to us. All right, excellent, excellent.
Well, lots of good information here, Terriam. Thanks a lot for coming on. I think that we had a lot of questions could be answered by listening to the program. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here with the podcast series.
Again, I'm going to tell people you want to be a business person, got to have insurance. And we did run a little bit long, so I think we're going to say goodbye here. But we'll see everyone next week, Gene. Keep it in the air and we will talk soon.
So from everyone at SUS News, thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. See you later. Bye.