Declarations

An Active Season

“We expect that anomalously warm tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures, combined with neutral tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures, will contribute to an active season.”

—Phil Klotzbach, Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project. The CSU team has predicted that the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season will be above average with nine hurricanes, five of them major, with a more than 70 percent chance that at least one of them will hit the U.S. coastline.

A Recovering Industry

The airline industry has “started to recover since the darkest days of the financial crisis, with rising passenger numbers and fleet investments resulting in insurance premium rising by 4 percent on average during 2010.”

—Aon Risk Solutions, in its “Airline Insurance Market Outlook, 2011,” said after overall decline in passenger numbers in 2009/10, 2010/11 insurance renewals for the airline industry showed recovery in every region of the world, with airlines in Asia Pacific predicting the largest increase, 12 percent. Expected passenger count is one of the key factors in determining an airline’s insurance premium. Passenger growth in Europe is forecast at around 11 percent, while in North America it’s around 7 percent.

An Important Benchmark

“We believe that this case sets an important benchmark for unintended acceleration litigation against Toyota across this country.”

—Toyota Motor Corp., in a statement released by the company, after a federal jury in New York found the company was not responsible for a 2005 crash that the driver blamed on the floor mat or the electronic throttle, in the first case to go to trial since automaker recalled millions of its vehicles. Toyota called the verdict an “early indicator of the strength of the legal theories behind unintended acceleration claims” against it. Toyota has recalled more than 14 million vehicles globally to fix gas pedals and other safety problems.

A Benefit for All

“We must stop the rising cost of coastal insurance for the benefit of all Alabamians.”

—Alabama Governor Robert Bentley is creating a commission to address the rising cost of insurance for the state’s coastal homeowners. Bentley said the seven-member commission will be asked to make recommendations on how to make affordable coverage more available to coastal property owners.

Topics Aviation