One Saturday morning, serial entrepreneur and accomplished aviator Mark Haidar called Oleg Ilichev with a simple question: "I just received my insurance quote for one 
of my airplanes. I'm a safe pilot, yet I'm being priced as if I'm no different from an unsafe one. Isn't there a better way to underwrite this risk?" The answer became the foundation for Class A.

For decades, aviation insurance had relied on static applications, historical averages, and limited data. Pilots spent hours completing forms, waited weeks for quotes, and received six-figure premiums with little transparency into how they had been priced. The industry measured experience, but it couldn't truly measure safety.


Over the next ten months, Mark and the Altai team worked together to reimagine aviation insurance from first principles. They shared a conviction that real-time data, not previously leveraged in aviation underwriting, and artificial intelligence could transform underwriting from a backward-looking exercise into a living understanding of pilot risk. Insurance should not simply price risk—it should help reduce it.


To build the company, they assembled one of the industry's most experienced teams. Joshua Ray and Robin Graham joined from Allianz, where together they had led North American aviation underwriting and product development for more than two decades. Shayne O'Sullivan brought deep expertise in telematics across some of the world's largest commercial vehicle fleets. Steve Nicoll, with more than 21,000 flight hours spanning sailplanes, helicopters, and Boeing 747s, became Chief Aviation Officer.


The results speak for themselves. In its first year, Class A wrote a significant amount of premiums, while producing the best loss ratio in the industry. More importantly, it demonstrated that data-driven underwriting and continuous safety engagement could fundamentally improve both insurance performance and aviation safety.