Airlines are taking action to ensure that they will continue to operate even after a nuclear war, The Telegraph reports.
War area in case of a nuclear disaster photo shutterstock
The planes could continue to fly after an atomic explosion, namely based on insurance policies specially designed to cover the possibility of escalating conflicts in Ukraine and Kashmir.
Current policies, which date from the 1950s, would require the ground immobilization of all civil aircraft around the world in case of detonation of a single nuclear bomb, based on the assumption that such a scenario would lead to the outbreak of a third World War.
But at present, given that, most likely, the conduct of nuclear weapons would rather involve so-called tactical foci, which are intended for limited use on the battlefield, the insurance industry has developed plans to allow flights in regions removed from conflict areas.
Gallagher, the largest aviation broker in the world, has started working on this plan since Vladimir Putin has threatened to carry out atomic weapons in 2022.
The plan was more recently driven by the conflict between India and Pakistan on the contested Kashmir, where hostilities have reached an unheard of level in recent decades.
Nigel Weyman, a senior partner in Gallagher, said the conflict in Ukraine had resuscitated the interest for insurance policies related to the nuclear field.
“At the time the terms were elaborated, it was assumed that any hostile detonation meant that everything would end, the Armageddon would come. But at that time they had no tactical nuclear weapons that varies in size and impact and which are eventually used.”
The most recent generation of the American Gravitational Bomb, launched from the air, carries, for example, a nuclear fossa with a power of only 0.3 kilotons.
This compared to 15 kilotons of the bomb thrown over the city of Hiroshima in 1945 and 100 kilotons of a trident II rocket foci.
While the UK withdrew its latest tactical nuclear weapons in 1998, it is believed that Russia has almost 2,000. North Korea revealed what supported a tactical weapon in 2023, while Pakistan's NASR rocket can carry a fighter nuclear fossa.
“Why should Air New Zealand, for example, suspend flights in the case of nuclear detonation in Europe, which would be a minor for her, even if not for the people around her?”, NWeyman Otea.
“Airlines find solutions for any challenges they face, safe corridors, minimal heights, so that soil-air missiles cannot reach them.”
“The volcanic ash clouds affect large areas, but the world continues to fly. However, a few words on an insurance policy can keep all the airplanes in the world.”
The plan of insurance companies
The broker has developed a plan by which a select number of insurers could evaluate the places where airlines should have permission to fly after a nuclear detonation, helped by the analyzes of security experts from Osprey Flight Solutions, specialists in risk management.
The group of 15, which also includes Allianz, the largest insurer in the world, would meet within four hours of detonation and would evaluate the threat to airlines, for each country.
The plan would offer each carrier $ 1 billion as a coating for passengers and third parties, compared to $ 2 billion or more within existing policies.
Weyman said that if it is ever triggered, the scheme will have lower costs than the price of a passenger coffee cup, which would be “easy to recover from ticket prices.”
Airline companies spent about $ 1.3 billion last year per insurance premiums to cover just over 4 billion air travelers, which means a cost of about 33 cents per client.
About 100 airlines have so far signed the plan, of the approximately 500 worldwide. About 60 companies in Europe have joined, although low-cost operators are reluctant, Weyman said.
Airlines could, however, be blocked by other insurance provisions, including a “War clause of the five powers” which would suspend this coverage in the case of a military conflict between the United Kingdom, USA, France, Russia and China.
This could be invoked if British or French troops sent to Ukraine were attacked, according to industry experts.
