XL London Market Ltd.?s syndicate 1209 leads the hull and liability coverage for the Transportes A?reos Nacionales de Selva Boeing 737-200 jet that crashed during an emergency landing in Peru last Tuesday killing as many as 40, market sources said.

TANS Peru Flight 204, carrying 92 passengers and eight crew, was en route from Lima when weather forced the pilot to attempt an emergency landing near the flight?s destination airport of Pucallpa. Sources said the aircraft was valued at $3.5 million and was built in 1981.

However, industry watchers are not anticipating that crash or any of the other four crashes of commercial airlines that preceded it this month will lead to higher insurance rates for airlines flying in the most modern jurisdictions such as the United States and Great Britain.

Bob Hartwig, chief economist for the New York-based Insurance Information Institute, told that is was important to note that only one of the five crashes involved a first world airline using top-of-the-line equipment with proper air traffic control at a major airport in a rich country.

However, in that case on August 2, all 309 people survived after the Air France Airbus A340 skidded off a runway and burst into flames while trying to land in Toronto during a thunderstorm.

?Nobody was killed which is the most expensive component associated with an aviation loss. It is not hull damage it is the liability and typically most aircraft have at least $1.5 billion on the liability in addition to the hull they have,? Mr. Hartwig said.

While the European insurance industry could potentially see claims of up to $100 million on the Air France ?hull coverage? as well as additional liability claims for the medical expenses of those injured, Mr. Hartwig said if their had been large scale loss of life, insurance costs would have been much higher. Airlines in modern economies compensation payments to the families of airline crash victims can run from $2.4 million to $4.1 million per passenger which the III said suggests the total cost to insurers could have been between $700 million to nearly $3 billion. Settlements are usually based on the potential salary of the individuals over their lifespan, according to the Illinois.

Insurance underwriters and brokers in London told Business Insurance Magazine last week that despite the crashes rates will likely fall in the fourth quarter, when such policies typically come up for renewal.

US airlines? insurance rates, which more than doubled after 2001, have since fallen by 10 percent to 15 percent a year, said Gavin Souter, managing editor of Business Insurance, a Chicago-based journal.

?I think rates will continue to ?I think rates will continue to go down because they went up so much after the attacks,? said Gavin Souter, managing editor of , a Chicago-based trade magazine for the insurance industry. ?The recent crashes haven?t been enough to influence the insurance market.?

Mr. Hartwig agrees that the crashes are unlikely to impact the rates for major modern airlines that adhere to the highest safety standards as aviation safety records in these economies has been extraordinary for more than three years. Large scheduled commercial airlines in the United States have experienced an unusually long period of safety since seeing 531 fatalities in 2001, half of which resulted from the September 11 hijackings with 260 from the November crash in the Queens section of New York. There were 13 fatalities on large scheduled commercial airlines in 2004 compared with 22 in 2003, according to the III.

?The rates for these airlines operating in these countries with modern aircraft and training is separate from what it is for airlines the no one has heard of in Peru or a Tunisia where there are fundamental questions about maintenance of aircraft, training of crews and those sorts of things all of which can factor into probability of an accident,? Mr. Hartwig said. ?There will be an impact on that segment of airlines operating out of countries where safety standards may not be up to the same level where they are in the US or France of the UK and that is where the distinction needs to be drawn. You can?t make a broad-brush approach and say all aircraft insurance rates are going to rise because of what happened. You have to look at this as not a single market. Insurers don?t look at it as a singled market. Different airlines present different risk s and they are treated as such.?

The question to ask now is whether a domestic airline in a small lesser-developed country is as safe as boarding a British Airways flight or American Airlines flight.

?Insurers have generally viewed it as a somewhat riskier prospect and the question now is whether the risk is materially higher than maybe had been previously assumed. It is inevitable [insurers are looking at it,? he said adding that it is also aviation officials in the United States should address as well. ?Many Americans fly on these domestic carriers when they are abroad and they may assume that the training, safety and maintenance of these aircraft are the same as in the US or Great Britain or Japan when in fact they many not be. In the interests of public safety some statements by our government aviation authority might be helpful too.?