Insurance companies Baloise refrains from further damage control with hail planes

The Baloise insurance group will not be using a hail plane in future. From 2018, a specially equipped Cessna took off from Birrfeld AG airfield every summer to "inoculate" clouds with silver iodide to prevent hail.

"The effect of the flights could not be measurably proven," said Thomas Schöb, Head of Customer Services at Baloise, in an interview with SRF's Regionaljournal Aargau-Solothurn.

From 2018 to 2023, a single-engine light aircraft with special equipment was on the move during the hail season from May to September to fly specifically to storm clouds and inoculate them with silver iodide. This prevents large and heavy hailstones from forming, it is said.

According to Baloise, one of the aims of the flights from Birrfeld AG airfield was to reduce the amount of hail damage to cars. In the fall of 2020, the company announced that hail-related claims had remained at a consistently low level compared to the years 2000 to 2017. The cloud vaccination program involved scientific collaboration with ETH Zurich and a "hail advisory board" of experts.

30 to 40 times per season

Large parts of German-speaking Switzerland were covered, as Baloise reported on Friday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency. Depending on the weather conditions, the aircraft took off around 30 to 40 times per season. Around four additional aircraft would have been needed to cover the whole of Switzerland.

SRF meteorologist Simon Eschle said in a radio interview that while hailstorms work in the laboratory, they tend not to work in practice. The problem is that it is hardly scientifically verifiable whether such methods have an effect.

SDA