Aren’t You Glad AOPA Isn’t Your Only Choice?

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) has held themselves out as the private pilot’s friend for a long time, the advocate, the go to organization, the one stop shop for all of your needs.

For all I know they may in fact be the shining star they claim to be, except when it comes to aviation life insurance where they stand out as being very limited in scope for the average pilot and amazingly like AARP, my least favorite advocacy group, in their other offerings.

From the life insurance information page of their website they throw out these offerings:

AOPA Group Term Life Insurance
Most likely you have some life insurance coverage. But is it enough to adequately provide for your loved ones if you’re no longer there to support them? Right now, AOPA members and their spouses under age 65 can apply for $5000 up to $1 million in affordable coverage with no aviation exclusions. Go ahead and get your quotes, but I’m not getting a warm, fuzzy feeling about a group product with face amounts available from $5000 to $1mm. Being group with super small face amounts it almost certainly has to be a simplified issue product and the way companies make it simple to issue is by overcharging or not guaranteeing. And what’s with only offering it up to age 65?

AOPA Level Term Life Insurance
AOPA members and their spouses can lock in affordable rates and benefits from $200,000 up to $1 million for 10 or 20 years. Every year you can trust that your rate won’t increase, making it easy to plan and budget from year to year. This is their Minnesota Life offering which, by the way, can be purchased through any independent agent. And when you go through an independent agent Minnesota Life opens up the offerings to include all the term lengths, 10, 15, 20 or 30 years, and face amounts from $100,000 to $10,000,000.

AOPA Senior Term Life Insurance
Often times obtaining quality, affordable coverage after age 50 is difficult. That’s not the case with AOPA Senior Term Life Insurance. It’s specifically designed for members over age 50. AOPA Members age 50 to under 75 and their spouses age 45-75 can obtain $10,000 to $50,000 in economical life insurance without submitting to a medical exam. This is the product that stinks like they robbed right off an AARP truck. Guaranteed issue whole life. Viciously overpriced permanent coverage that, because of the high cost, will rarely be still in force at the time of your death unless you can manage to die early on as a “senior”, say at age 50. Guaranteed a bad deal even if you’re just looking for a final expense policy.

Bottom line. AOPA is pathetically far down on the list of places that a private pilot should go looking for their best options on life insurance. There are plenty of independent agents out there that can get better deals in almost every circumstance.