The 24th annual NBAA maintenance management conference was held in New Orleans last week. Fourteen speakers dispensed management advice and career-enhancing information to more than 240 participants. During their presentation “Managing Legal and Risk Issues in a time of doing more with less,” John Averill of Insurance Office of America and Mark Fava, an attorney with Nelson Mullins & Scarborough, gave frank and sometimes unsettling answers.

About a corporate flight department mechanic being a Good Samaritan and helping a transient aircraft, Fava advised, “If you touch someone's aircraft other than your own, even with the best of intentions, you are opening yourself up to a potential problem. An audience member asked, “Can we buy a reasonably priced insurance policy to cover us if we do that sort of thing?

Averill responded: “Reasonably priced is the operative factor. I don't think such a policy exists.

It is best not to open yourself to that type of exposure.