Cycles, though unpredictable in duration, are a fact of life—a manifestation of the age-old idiom “what goes up must come down.” In aviation, this could not be more evident than in the parabolic curve of airline pilot hiring that creates perpetual boom/bust cycles of opportunity.
Though not quite as headline grabbing or sexy, aviation insurance is cyclical too. For more than five years as FLYING’s aviation insurance contributor, I’ve been lamenting the woes of higher insurance rates and tougher underwriting standards. I was starting to feel like a killjoy of a post-pandemic general aviation party, where more people were becoming pilots, and they were flying more hours in more capable airplanes—a boom we haven’t experienced in decades.
