By Kirstin Ridley and Carolyn Cohn
LONDON (Reuters) – Aircraft leasing firm Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) has filed a London lawsuit against 11 insurers, including Lloyd’s of London, AIG, Chubb and Swiss Re, two months after it wrote off almost $600 million for 19 aircraft stuck in Russia.
The High Court claim also names Fidelis Insurance Ireland, HDI Global Speciality, Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company, Great Lakes Insurance, Global Aerospace Underwriting Managers, Starr Europe Insurance and Axis Speciality Europe.
A spokesperson for Lloyd’s said the insurer was “not at liberty to share information on any specific claim, policy or policyholder.” Munich Re, Great Lakes’ parent, AIG and Swiss Re declined to comment.
The other insurers and DAE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But lessors have vowed to pursue insurers since losing control of more than 400 leased planes worth almost $10 billion after Western countries sanctioned Russia over the war in Ukraine and Moscow blocked the jets from leaving.
The claim has been lodged in London four months after Dublin-based AerCap, the world’s biggest aircraft lessor, filed a $3.5 billion insurance lawsuit over more than 100 of its jets seized in Russia.
DAE, which said in August it had written off $576.5 million for its planes, noted in its half-year results statement in August that it had “no way to determine whether these aircraft will be returned at any point in the future.”
“The group has insurance in respect of the aircraft in question under a number of insurance policies and the group has filed insurance claims to recover amounts due under the policies,” it added.
Details of the claim, which was filed last week, are not yet publicly available.
(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley and Carolyn Cohn in London; Additional reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
