Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey on the border of Syria will have “tragic consequences” for relations between the two countries. But consequences on the war market are expected to be minimal given the hammering it has taken over the last 24 months.
A source in the European aviation war risk market told Insurance Business that in this situation, a warplane shooting down a warplane is not unusual, and that anyone flying over Syria would likely be paying additional insurance premiums.
The Russian plane, an Su-24 attack aircraft, was reportedly downed by an air-to-air missile launched from a Turkish F-16 fighter jet. Both pilots are understood to have ejected over Syria but their fate is unknown.
The insurance professional said that the war market, which is small, is still reeling from various impacts over the last 18 to 24 months, most recently of the Russian passenger plane blown up by a terrorist bomb last month.
Russia had launched extensive attacks on Islamic State targets in Raqqa, the extremist group's headquarters in Syria, in retaliation for the attack on the passenger plane.
“War underwriters are carrying on as usual,” the source said. “But the market is still looking at the effects of the bombing of the Russian passenger plane over Egypt. It’s likely that this will be covered 50/50 by the hull war risk and hull insurance markets, with the civilian casualties covered by standard underwriters. But it takes time to work out the cost, actuaries have to calculate the impact,” the source said.
