TMK's aviation practice was founded in 1976, the same year Concorde completed its first commercial flight. The world's fastest passenger aircraft, capable of crossing the Atlantic in under three and a half hours, felt like a glimpse of where aviation was headed. Fifty years on, Concorde is long retired, and the aircraft most of us board today would be broadly recognisable to an underwriter from that era, even if almost everything underneath the surface has changed. The same, in many ways, could be said of the aviation insurance market.

I have spent four decades in this industry. I did not start at the very beginning of TMK's aviation story, but across that time I have watched carriers enter and exit the market, appetites shift, and familiar names disappear. Through all of it, TMK has been a constant.

The fundamental risk of putting aircraft in the sky has also not changed dramatically. The Boeing 747 was entering service around the time our aviation practice was established. The aircraft flying today are not wildly different in concept, though what they are made of, how much they cost to repair, and how safely they perform are all transformed beyond recognition.

Carbon fibre construction has replaced aluminium. Engines that once cost between one and five million dollars now regularly exceed 35 million, more than the entire value of many aircraft two decades ago. A bird strike that would once have meant cutting out a panel and riveting in a replacement now means replacing an entire engine. The attritional nature of the risk has shifted enormously, even as the catastrophic loss frequency that characterised the market 30 or 40 years ago has fallen sharply. Air travel is significantly safer today than it was, driven by technology, regulation and improvements in pilot training.

Some things, though, have barely changed at all. Aviation is still a relationship market. The largest airline broker I deal with today is someone I have known for 45 years. The fundamentals of how business is transacted, the trust, the continuity, the willingness to stay present when conditions are difficult, remain as important as they have always been.

The moments that tested us

A long career in aviation insurance means witnessing events that define the market. September 11, 2001, remains the most significant of my career. Beyond the scale of the loss itself, it was a moment of profound human tragedy for the insurance industry. Many of those who died worked in the buildings at the heart of the market, colleagues and people we knew. The uncertainty and grief in the days that followed was unlike anything the industry had experienced. What I remember most is the collective resolve that followed. The market came together, coverage was maintained, and the industry demonstrated a resilience that I think is still underappreciated.

Periods of geopolitical tension and conflict more broadly have presented the market with complex and evolving challenges, around assets, policy wordings, and legal and regulatory questions that rarely have simple answers. The consistent lesson is the same: aviation underwriting is a long-term commitment, and the obligations it carries extend well beyond the policy period.

Kiln, and then Tokio Marine Kiln

Through all of it, this business has remained in the market. That is not as straightforward as it sounds. Staying committed through difficult periods, when losses are heavy and the temptation to step back is real, is a choice that not every carrier makes. Kiln made it consistently. When Tokio Marine acquired the business, that instinct did not change. If anything, it deepened.

For major airline clients and manufacturers, the question of who is behind the policy matters. They are not buying coverage for a year and moving on. They are building relationships with insurers they expect to be there when a loss happens, when a new aircraft type brings unfamiliar risks, when conditions become difficult. The financial strength and long-term commitment of the Tokio Marine Group, combined with the underwriting depth that Kiln built over decades, is what makes that promise credible. In the aviation market, that combination carries real weight.

The runway ahead

The next generation of aviation underwriters will inherit a market in transition. Urban air mobility, autonomous systems, new propulsion technologies, and the rapid growth of the drone market are all moving from concept towards reality. The physics of flight have not changed, but the shape of the risk is changing faster than the market's frameworks have sometimes been willing to accommodate.

What will be required is the same thing that has always been required: the willingness to engage with unfamiliar risk from the ground up, the discipline to price it honestly, and the commitment to stay present when the market gets difficult. Those instincts are built over time, through experience, through the moments that test you, and through working alongside people who take the long view.

Fifty years in, that is still what this market rewards.