Do you know that the Vancouver Worldwide Airport (YVR) used to have life insurance coverage merchandising machines from which passengers may buy last-minute insurance coverage proper earlier than boarding their flights?
It’s true.
The machines have been first put in by an insurance coverage underwriting firm in 1951.
At the moment, for each quarter you plugged within the machine you’d get $5,000 value of life insurance coverage. The utmost you may initially purchase was $25,000 value for $1.25, and that finally went as much as a $75,000 most.
You have been insured for “unintentional lack of life, limb or sight and different accidents” on flights.
Pilots’ associations lobbied towards the machines for years, after various insurance coverage frauds have been perpetrated and so they feared that promoting insurance coverage like this inspired the sabotage of flights.
In reality, in the USA, there was a case the place a person confessed to purchasing insurance coverage from one among a lot of these machines on the Denver airport, then bombing the aircraft that his mom was on by placing an explosive system in a wrapped Christmas present she introduced on board.
Forty-four folks died because of Jack Gilbert Graham’s bomb. He was tried and convicted, then just a few months later was executed.
In 1968 the machines have been successfully banned from YVR after they opened a brand new terminal, and so they haven’t been seen since.