Aircraft Hail Damage - If you store the aircraft outside, you'll want hull insurance, and avoid over- or undervaluing the value of the plane. Overvaluing the hull will boost the premiums and undervaluing could send it to a salvage yard.
Hail begins as rain, lifted by updrafts in a thunderstorm. The tops can be as high as 65,000 feet, and temps as cold as a -70 F. As the water droplet is carried upward, it freezes.
Aircraft Hail Damage
The bigger the storm, the more the cycle continues until each ice pellet becomes too heavy for the power of the updraft. Mild storms in the summer can create hail of up to ½ inch in diameter.
Final Analysis
This can be done using different techniques. On airplanes, you don't drill a hole, insert a screw and pull the dent out. There has been some luck using the paintless dent removal technique, and a couple of national automotive paintless dent repair companies (like The Dent Guys and EZ Dent) have dipped into the airplane business, working under the supervision of IA mechanics.
It's a tough process on aircraft because of the lack of room between the upper and lower skins of the wing, as one example. Another problem is that unless they are trained, body shop techs might not understand the alloys used, the temper of the aluminum and the techniques needed to safely work the metal.
Hail damage is usually covered in a policy, and companies will repair (but not rebuild) an airplane if the hull value warrants it, and the owner doesn't opt for a payout. Riney and others compare hail damage to the condition of logbooks when it comes to establishing aircraft value.
He recommends that a buyer physically check any reported hail damage and negotiate a price they can live with. If you buy the plane right, this "relative" value will follow the airplane the rest of its life, and then the next owner can buy it right, too, putting off the repair until the next paint project.
Tip Pilot/Atc Collaboration Helps Everybody
Since hail damage will often involve your insurance company, it's best to learn how your particular insurer will handle a hail-damage claim when you buy or renew the policy. Don't always assume there is complete coverage to your liking.
Since aircraft insurance policies vary widely from company to company (especially now in a hardened market), ask your broker for advice. They'll have specific experience with these kinds of claims—which could be considered cosmetic. We've heard of some companies limiting cosmetic damage to 10 percent of the insured value.
It's easy to see why the damage can be severe—a 3-inch hailstone can achieve speeds of 90 MPH with a 120 foot/pound impact. Some hail pellets are round and some are more like clumps of smaller ice balls fused together, which is exactly what they are.
No matter the form, the damage is unpredictable. I spoke to Steve Wentworth at Wentworth Aviation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a long-established and respected aircraft salvage dealer. Wentworth has bought over 6000 damaged or worn-out aircraft since starting the business in 1986. He told me that one question he asks about every aircraft he bids on is if it has sustained hail damage.
The Boeing Way
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plane was climbing from 30,000 to 35,000 feet (not "cruising at 35,000 feet") over Alberta when it encountered severe weather, including thunderstorms and large hail. The size of the hail that hit the aircraft cannot be definitively determined, as none of it was captured or penetrated the craft's windshield.
NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory 120 David L. Boren Blvd. Norman, OK 73072 USA (405) 325-3620 Darrell Yelton of Cirrus Aircraft said that Cirrus models (like many other composite models) are relatively easy to repair unless there are penetrations.
Drill a pinhole and inject a proprietary Cirrus resin until the void created by crushed foam (the skins are a sandwich, with about a half-inch of foam between two layers of fiberglass) is filled and it begins to ooze out of the hole.
Tip My Aircraft Was Damaged – Now What?
Then, sand, paint and fly. The 2024 NBAA Maintenance Conference provides vital education and networking opportunities for anyone involved in business aircraft maintenance – from technicians to directors of maintenance. Stay up-to-date on the latest operational information critical to your job and connect with over 900 fellow peers.
Unless it's structural in nature, repairing hail damage is a value judgment by the owner. Best case, you can control whether or not you can live with cosmetic flaws. Every person has a price, they say.
You can actually rush to judgment with hail as there are many reports of smaller hail dimples disappearing over time as the aircraft sits outside in the heat. We asked Marci Veronie at Avemco specifically how the company handles a typical hail-damage claim.
First, Avemco assumes you have purchased hull coverage, paid the premium and complied with all of the terms and conditions of the policy. Veronie acknowledged that some hail damage is extensive enough that the cost to repair it is such that the aircraft becomes a constructive loss.
Tip Take Advantage Of The Latest Weather Technology
"The most important part of a hail-damage claim is where and when. Telling the adjuster that it happened a while back or out that away, doesn't really help your claim," Gustav Haussler from Master Aircraft Services in Wickenburg, Arizona, said.
His shop consistently reels in high marks for customer service, workmanship and overall quality in Aviation Consumer paint shop satisfaction surveys. If you're faced with hail damage repair, take it someplace that has experience with both painting and structural repairs as they go hand in hand.
Aluminum airplanes aren't that simple. There is a bit of rebound with aluminum, but it easily bends when impacted. Kent White ("The Tin Man"), who does phenomenal metal forming work, calls this metal flow. Metal is moved forming a shape, and in the case of hail damage, the metal is stretched from the center of the impact point.
The metal completely surrounding this impact point is stretched to create the difference in surface area of the metal. The only way to eliminate this dimple is to fill it or pull (compress) the metal back to its original shape.
Should you get a check and want to repair the damage, take it to the right shop. I would bet that any good aircraft metal shop based in or around the "hail alley" states would have a leg up on shops that rarely see hail.
Your IA might be inclined to work with a local dent shop, but they might need hand-holding while working around airplanes. "Hail damage is much more important to a buyer than a seller," Riney rightfully said.
Anyone can get stuck with one that's taken a hit. He actually owned a Cessna 182 for a while before he even noticed that it had slight hail damage. On Aug. 7, 2015, a Delta Airbus crew was forced to make an emergency landing after flying into a hailstorm over Nebraska.
The mishap occurred in part because the pilots did not obtain adequate weather information from the Denver air traffic controller. This incident highlights the importance of effective collaboration between pilots and ATC. Filling a hail dimple is difficult and time-consuming.
Bondo (the featherlight aviation version) takes time and a lot of sanding. Some techs have gone to resin-filled aluminum paste. Both of these have to be applied sparingly and in a number of applications. I know from experience.
Too much and you will never get it to sand flat. There are now self-etching filler materials that will stick well to aluminum. There are also newly available primers that build up and self-etch. I wonder how this would work on the smallest things.
"In this case, you would receive payment for the insured value of the aircraft and Avemco would retain the salvage," Veronie told us about damage that results in a total loss. If the damage is not severe enough to total the aircraft, Avemco will pay to repair the aircraft back to the condition it was prior to the loss.
In other words, and this is important, if the aircraft's paint was in ratty condition before the hail damage (or if the aircraft hasn't been painted yet—as in the case of some homebuilts), Avemco won't be paying for a
new paint job. If you have a valuable warbird or rare classic that's been hit by hail, there's an expensive electronic dent removal (EDR for short) solution from Boeing. It says the process relies on the fact that the magnetic permeability in metals is much lower than in air.
In other words, it takes longer for a magnetic field to penetrate through a metal than it does in air. If you're interested in elevating your career to the next level, look no further than SDC2025.
You'll learn current best practices and trends from industry experts and fellow attendees through top-level education sessions and critical peer-to-peer networking to help you work smarter, not harder in the year ahead. For more than five decades, active and dedicated aircraft owners and pilots have turned to AVIATION CONSUMER to answer their most important buying questions.
This website contains many older reviews. Unless otherwise noted, these reviews carry product pricing from the time of the original review. Hail damage is one of the most difficult claims to adjust for insurance companies. Light and medium hail damage is the most common, which tends to be the dime-sized, 1-inch stuff that dimples everything, but generally breaks nothing.
This damage absolutely affects the value of the aircraft, but generally does not affect its performance or its structure. When you start seeing holes in the skin, broken light lenses and windshields, then you'll know a thorough inspection of the structure (and the prop) is in order.
"The nice thing about the TCF is that it's a high-confidence product, updated every two hours so you've got something you can look at throughout the day." said Kosak. "In the past, it was as if somebody was taking - not a paint brush - but a paint roller to the page.
This new tool is more accurate and dependable.” The useful tool that applies small fixtures to the dent with hot-melt glue can be handy and does not affect the paint finish. Technicians use a light bar behind the work to check for variations in the surface and pull slightly until the dimple is removed.
On thin-skinned surfaces, this puller needs to be supported to keep from making new impressions. You can see this process done on vehicles with a YouTube search. Long rods with special ends are also used, but require a pivot point where the rod is braced to push slightly from the inside out.
Last, some of us are so cheap we'd take the check, buy a paintless dent kit and spend a million hours pulling out the little puckers. But hey, it gets us out of the house for a little bonding with the aircraft.
Spring is finally here, bringing with it balmy temperatures – and hail the size of baseballs. From roughly May to September, hailstorms can occur regularly in certain areas of the United States, particularly in the Great Plains, where "Hail Alley" - home to the most hail days each year - stretches through Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.
While diminution of value may be unavoidable, large financial loss does not have to be. Owens recommends that all operators - especially those who frequent areas prone to hailstorms - make sure their insurance covers hail damage to the hull, both in the air and on the ground.
Owens also suggests avoiding over-insuring (an agreed-upon hull value in excess of the actual hull value), as this can make determination of a total loss more difficult by an insurer. Veronie reiterated that in some cases, the hail damage is cosmetic in nature and does not affect the airworthiness of the aircraft.
Since some owners may not want to put the aircraft in the shop for a repair, Avemco would offer a monetary settlement, while reducing the value of the hull by the claim payout amount until it was repaired.
Despite an operator's best efforts, hail damage - whether on the ground or in the air - is sometimes unavoidable. If the skin is damaged in a way that affects flight characteristics or a control surface, the damage may rise to an airworthiness item, resulting in major repairs.
However, even cosmetic damage may have an impact on the value of the aircraft when it is resold. Designed to be strong where needed, our planes are built as light as possible using the thinnest aluminum sheet (or fabric) that is structurally safe.
Aluminum takes it on the chin in a hailstorm. Even big iron with much heavier skins can get beat to death by hail. When the EDR unit's coil is placed over the damaged area, the capacitors in it release 36,000 amps of electric current in 1.5 milliseconds to produce a magnetic field on both sides of the dent.
A second set of capacitors then collapses the nearest magnetic field by instantly discharging half the energy generated by the first set of capacitors. The 2023 NBAA Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (NBAA-BACE) will return to Las Vegas, NV from October 17-19.
Save the date and make plans to attend the biggest and most productive event of the year for business aviation.
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