Aviation spares insurance

Aviation spares insurance is all-risks cover for engines, landing gear and parts while not fitted to the aircraft, on the ground, in a shop or in transit. In May 2022, publishing its first-quarter results, AerCap reported 113 aircraft and 11 engines still in Russia. The eleven engines did not sit under the same insurance as the aircraft. While it hangs under a wing, an engine is part of the aircraft and its agreed value. Removed, stored, sent to the shop or leased alone to an operator, it becomes a spare and moves to a separate policy. Spares all risks covers engines, parts and equipment in the insured's care, on the ground or carried as cargo, against all physical damage not excluded. It is written with limits per item, per location and per shipment, because accumulation builds in a warehouse or a hold. Policies produced in the London Russia litigation give the scale: $50 million any one location or transit at one lessor, $350 million per occurrence and location at another. A widebody engine is worth up to tens of millions of dollars, enough to fill a warehouse limit with a few pallets. War follows the hull: AVN 48B (Aviation, London market clauses) excludes, a war policy buys back. For a long time hull war policies covered spares only in transit, and an engine stored in a country at war was bare. In April 2026 a London broker opened ground war cover for spares not in transit, with a sum per item and an annual aggregate. Still, the line between spares and hull moves at every engine swap, and a loss during removal often falls between the two wordings.