Bad news for the Collings Foundation from Boeing Field

[StangStung]

Nothing new here. It's happened to the railroad prevervation field years ago. There are steam locomotives that are fully capable of operation but haven't turned a wheel under power in a long time because the operators can't afford the insurance coverages the railroads they could run on demand before being allowed to take to their main line.
In a way it's a smiliar issue to this one. A railroad locomotive operator usually doesn't own the railroad they run on, just like most warbird operators don't own the airports they land on.
I'm just surprised it took this long for the same issue to creep into warbirds.
Still, the MoF has a lot of very politically well-connected and financed backers. As I've posted earlier, the museum display focus isn't apparently on warplanes right now, but these fly-ins are very high profile and it makes the museum look bad that a B-17 can't roll right up to their ramp. I'd like to think that this loss of exposure might lead to something in this case.

A headline something along the lines of "County prices historic plane out of landing on airfield where it was built" (journalistic bending of facts) would probably do nicely. Won't someone please think of the children?

[CAPFlyer]

CAPFlyer, I defer to you on the local situation, which I know nothing about. I do want to raise a question about this claim, which I also heard when Sally B was having its insurance difficulties a few years ago, that the authorities are treating them the same as a commercial airline...

JMC I think pretty much summed it up. This is one of the problems you run into with landing fees at most airports as well. They take whatever weight they want (not what's on your airplane's operating limits) and charge that, even if that means you're paying for several thousand pounds your airplane can never operate at. We ran into this with the CV-240 occasionally because someone decided that the CV-240 was the same as a CV-440 or CV-580 and was charging us for a MTOW of 50,000 pounds or 58,100 pounds versus the real MTOW of 42,500. The other side of it is that some municipalities and airport authorities define an aircraft by it's maximum capacity, not by how many seats are in it. This also changes the liability and is why the CAF has had problems with it's C-47/R4D's even though there are only 19 seats in them (per insurance requirements), because they could carry more, some places want to charge more or restrict operations based on local rules that prevent operations of aircraft with over 19 seats.

[JohnB]

I phoned King Country's Tranportation PR woman Thursday afternoon and left a message.
Let's see how long it takes a "public servant" to get back to a member of the public.

No, I'm not holding my breath.

[Speedy]

I phoned King Country's Tranportation PR woman Thursday afternoon and left a message.
Let's see how long it takes a "public servant" to get back to a member of the public.

No, I'm not holding my breath.

Well John, I am an employee of King County...and I too contacted them. Thursday morning I got a phone call from the exectutive secretary wanting to schedule an appointment with me for Tuesday morning to 'discuss the matter'. They ARE listening.

So while you're not holding your breath, I know that they have been INUNDATED with calls and e-mails, and that within a few hours of Collings posting that info, the county contacted Collings and started 'working things out for next year'.

[JohnB]

I phoned King Country's Tranportation PR woman Thursday afternoon and left a message.
Let's see how long it takes a "public servant" to get back to a member of the public.

No, I'm not holding my breath.

Well John, I am an employee of King County...and I too contacted them. Thursday morning I got a phone call from the exectutive secretary wanting to schedule an appointment with me for Tuesday morning to 'discuss the matter'. They ARE listening.

So while you're not holding your breath, I know that they have been INUNDATED with calls and e-mails, and that within a few hours of Collings posting that info, the county contacted Collings and started 'working things out for next year'.

Great news.
I'm glad they're talking with you and others.
I'm not asking for them to give away the place, just a bit of common sense.
It seems that a non-profit doing historic preservation and education deserves that much.
Thanks for pressing the issue.

[donno21]

Can't say I'm surprised, 'bout the norm for the Soverign Kingdom of Washington. Glad I escaped when I did. Do want to thank the citizens of WA. for voting in the sale of booze in stores, keeps our state sales tax down. "Course when they come for booze, they buy gas and smokes and 'Real" laundry detergent.

[whistlingdeath77]

crooks want more money. plain and simple, the new american way. take a nice organization like the collings and make sure you suck out every dime you can get. Dont worry that the aircraft you want money off of fought for your freedom and died so you can make dumb decisions like this. Worst part is that a younger generation of kids may not be able to see these aircaft

[RickH]

crooks want more money. plain and simple, the new american way. take a nice organization like the collings and make sure you suck out every dime you can get. Dont worry that the aircraft you want money off of fought for your freedom and died so you can make dumb decisions like this. Worst part is that a younger generation of kids may not be able to see these aircaft

I don't think King County was going to see any additional revenue from this. Any extra income would have gone directly to the insurance underwriter who would have provided the additional coverage.

[Speedy]

So here's the situation...and perhaps those of you with rather thin skin need to reel your comments back in. I read some of these comments on here and just shake my head. Are you guys still on the grade school playground?

I actually had a face-to-face with the King County people involved, and since I work for King County I didn't get the 'canned answer'. The issue here is that ironically King County and the Collings Foundation have the SAME insurance agency, and what happend was two different underwriters for the same organization feeding two different sets of requirements and numbers to their specific client. So you have the insurance agency telling the county 'oh, you guys need to have THIS much insurance for that group to be selling rides out of your airport', and yet telling the Collings Foundation "no, you guys only need to carry THIS much to fly out of there"...which happend to be a significant amount of money apart.

This apparently didn't come to light until the planes had actually touched-down at Boeing Field. As it was related to me, BOTH parties tried to make something happen, but the stumbling block was with the insurance carrier. In the end, King County would have had to make up the difference on their own in order to make something happen within the time period the planes were scheduled to be there, and it's not in the budget. Trust me, it's not in the budget.

However, King County did get a very large amount of response from the warbird community in response to this, so they have already been working with both Collings and the insurance company to make sure everyone is on the same page for next year...or more important that both sides of the underwriters at the insurance carrier are actually talking to each other and working together instead of dividing and giving each party conflicting numbers.

[whistlingdeath77]

crooks want more money. plain and simple, the new american way. take a nice organization like the collings and make sure you suck out every dime you can get. Dont worry that the aircraft you want money off of fought for your freedom and died so you can make dumb decisions like this. Worst part is that a younger generation of kids may not be able to see these aircaft

I don't think King County was going to see any additional revenue from this. Any extra income would have gone directly to the insurance underwriter who would have provided the additional coverage.

Sorry, I meant to mention the insurance company in my rant. It was never intended at king country.

[Randy Haskin]

Great info, Brad, thanks for posting it.

Somehow I doubt that info will ever has as much legs as the initial info that spread over the web like fire.

[JimH]

We knew long before we touched down at KBFI that there was an insurance issue. We had enough time to work out staging from Renton to do our rides. There was plenty of time to work out any issue. In fact we were stuck in Hoquiam due to weather and right up to the minute we left for Boeing we had an alternate plan if needed. I hope next year this issue is resolved.
jim

So here's the situation...and perhaps those of you with rather thin skin need to reel your comments back in. I read some of these comments on here and just shake my head. Are you guys still on the grade school playground?

I actually had a face-to-face with the King County people involved, and since I work for King County I didn't get the 'canned answer'. The issue here is that ironically King County and the Collings Foundation have the SAME insurance agency, and what happend was two different underwriters for the same organization feeding two different sets of requirements and numbers to their specific client. So you have the insurance agency telling the county 'oh, you guys need to have THIS much insurance for that group to be selling rides out of your airport', and yet telling the Collings Foundation "no, you guys only need to carry THIS much to fly out of there"...which happend to be a significant amount of money apart.

This apparently didn't come to light until the planes had actually touched-down at Boeing Field. As it was related to me, BOTH parties tried to make something happen, but the stumbling block was with the insurance carrier. In the end, King County would have had to make up the difference on their own in order to make something happen within the time period the planes were scheduled to be there, and it's not in the budget. Trust me, it's not in the budget.

However, King County did get a very large amount of response from the warbird community in response to this, so they have already been working with both Collings and the insurance company to make sure everyone is on the same page for next year...or more important that both sides of the underwriters at the insurance carrier are actually talking to each other and working together instead of dividing and giving each party conflicting numbers.

[Sgt13Echo]

Why does it seem to me the older I get the more politicians seem like organized crime?

[Mike]

Sorry, I meant to mention the insurance company in my rant. It was never intended at king country.

So the County tell the Collings Foundation that they require more insurance cover, and by your logic this is the insurance company's fault?

[The Inspector]

Sorry, I meant to mention the insurance company in my rant. It was never intended at king country.

So the County tell the Collings Foundation that they require more insurance cover, and by your logic this is the insurance company's fault?

When its the very same carrier, and they can't seem to figure out they are in conflict with themselves-----it's sort of like 'so how long have you been pushing on doors marked 'PULL'?