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Opinion: LSA/Sport Pilot is at best a mediocre sucess


Alex

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I can't completely agree with Dan's statement (under another topic)  in the rule change article that the Sport Pilot initiative is "a success."

I'm happy with my sport pilot license and my LSA (with some minor beefs, such as why the heck can't a rent a Cessna 152 after some appropriate training ... because there's hardly anywhere I can rent an official LSA aircraft.)

 

But the LSA idea was supposed to do several things:

A) Open the door much wider for a new crop, greater number, of students becoming GA pilots by making it much less costly and much faster to train and fly.

B) Stimulate production of a new crop of modern and LOWER cost aircraft in the SLSA class.

C) Resolve the issue of the ultralight community cheating on the regulations flying ULs overweight and more than 5 gallons fuel, etc, and address that community's desire to fly heavier aircraft.

D) Resolve the issue of the UL community abusing the intent of the UL-trainer aircraft as personal two person, not "training" use.

E) Provide some flying options for existing private pilots reluctant to take their next aeromedical.

 

Last  numbers I saw put the number of Sport Pilot certificate holders at only 5,157. Compare that to 120,546 student pilots. Even  if it's 16,000 as I think someone here stated that's a drop in the bucket. I've talked to several flight schools who sold their only LSA because there was so little demand for it. I'd say "A" has not been met. Anyone really disagree with that?. 

As for "B": New LSA's start at $100K , many at $150K and some well over $250K. This is for aircraft that were suppose to make easier entry into aviation for lower income prospective pilots. So much for "B."

As for C and D: Sure it resolved it..... by grandfathering in those UL owners smart enough to get their fat ULs certified as ELSAs. But it virtually closed the door to newcomers into ultralight flying. Why? Because it eliminated the existence of UL trainer aircraft and UL flight instructors. Today if someone with no flight experience expresses to me interest in getting into UL flying and asks me "how can I get instruction" my answer is "that's difficult, and if you even can, it's likely to be costly (paying CFI instruction rates and high rental rates.) Before the LSA-sport-pilot rules within about 25 miles of my home there were about five UL instructors. They would train students at a total cost of about $25 per hour instructor plus aircraft. Today there are none. Similar situation almost everywhere nationwide. I'd tell the would be UL pilot "Uh.... Hummm.... maybe you can find one of the few remaining places flying twoseat former UL-trainers now registered as ELSA with a LODA letting them using them for training. But they'll charge you professional CFI rates and rental fees totaling well over $130 per hour... and you'll likely have to travel far out of your home city to do it. Count on at least 5 day food and housing and food out of town.  Or maybe you can beg someone with a UL-like LSA to give you informal training. Or you can do what we did back in the very early days. Study up as best you can on what's involved, talk to some UL pilots, and strap yourself into a single seat UL and take off. Most of the early UL pilots did that, and most, but not all, survived DIY training.  Oh, yes... another alternative is go and get full on sport pilot training. That'll likely equip you with more than enough skill to fly most legal ULs. But it'll cost you likely well over $3000 by the time your done and take months.

In short the LSA/sport pilot initiative just about killed all growth and doorways into UL flying.

As for "E." Yup. It did that. Those private pilots were the biggest winners of the Sport Pilot initiative.

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The basic problem with Sport Pilot certificate is that you go thru about 95% of training a private pilot would do ( which is not a bad thing ) but end up with relatively severe limitations ( mostly around what you can fly ) so why bother ? The only true and valuable benefit is lack of medical which is why , like you mentioned, this has been a real success among people who can’t get a medical but beyond that it is not really worth the trouble - just get a private certificate and you can still fly LSA planes  or whatever you want.

 

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Hi Warmi!

I pretty much agree with you. Not flying at night is for me personally not a severe limitation. Not being able ever to take my wife PLUS a friend flying is pretty significant. So is effectively being unable to rent an aircraft if I'm on vacation somewhere (say I'm in Hawaii on vacation) because almost no FBOs have LSAs in their rental fleets. And the don't fly over 10,000 feet MSL is really neither significant nor enforceable.

It IS true that it's typically significantly cheaper (though certainly not "really cheap" in the eyes of the kind of wannabe pilots kept out of flying by tight budgets) ..... Say about $3000 vs about $6000 for typical private pilot student. I think that's mostly because you don't have to run up as many dual hours.

Although I'm happy with my Sport Pilot license and my LSA (I share one with a partner) I do regret not going for private. As you say I did 95% of what the private pilot would have required me to do. The differences are so minor: Mainly have to learn about altitude flying and do a night cross country flight. About two years ago I talked a friend who was going to get a sport pilot license into going for his private.

Only reason I went for sport pilot is about 30 years I had cancer and the savvy folks at AOPA told me that if I put that on my medical history the local aeromedical examiner would not be allowed to pass me (otherwise I'd pass with flying colors..20/20 vision ... teenager's blood pressure, etc.) and have to kick my application up the FAA chain. I was told that could delay it 6 months and FAA would make me take some totally useless medical tests to prove I was not still after 30 years dying of that same cancer. And that if someone at FAA checked the wrong box and refused to pass me, I would have to appeal it. That I would win my appeal, but it would take 6 more months and cost me about $1200 to do the appeal. So I bypassed all that and went for sport pilot. The ironic thing is about two years later they changed the aeromedical rules so  persons with certain cancers (skin cancer, and my type) are no longer forced to jump through all those extra hoops.

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A) I wouldn't measure the success by number of certificated pilots. As was said, the difference between sport and private is night flight, and a slightly longer cross country leg, and hood time. That's a pretty insignificant difference in the grand scheme of things. In actuality I would say LSA is attracting people who decide they made it this far, might as well go all the way.

B ) These exist. There's actually a lot of models that are sub 100k. I've seen models for sub 30k. The issue is not the availability, it's the demand. Most buyers don't actually want cheaper airplanes *and also have to sacrifice features*. If they truely want a cheaper plane, they'll buy a standard airworthiness one.

Here's a light sport manufacturer, for example, where the units are extremely inexpensive: http://www.msquaredaircraft.com/ . But again, people don't want those kinds. They're looking for "real airplanes" at rock bottom prices, fully loaded, and that's just not going to happen. It's unrealistic.

So this isn't the fault of LSA, it's the issue with uninformed buyers or buyers that don't actually know how much it *really* costs to build their dream airplane.

As for instruction: the fact is, it just requires practice. You could eliminate many of the flying requirements and you're still going to have people taking dozens of hours to learn to fly. It's not the requirements. It's the students ability to learn.

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I went ahead and did all the private pilot requirements on top of my regular Sport Pilot training - mostly because I trained in my own plane. It was nothing - compared to actually learning how to fly ( or rather land ) , going thru your first solo etc. , the extra few hours was nothing really. Given how variable is training time for different people based on their personal limitation/preferences - a lot more extra time and money comes from that variability rather than differences between certificates.

And frankly, what pretty much proves my point is the very fact that there are so few Sport Pilot certificated pilots ( compared to other certs ) - people just don’t find it worthwhile.

In fact, I think there are a lot more people flying under Light Sport rules than the number that was mentioned by the original poster - it is just most of them are older private pilots with expired medicals rather than newly minted Sport Pilots -just  look at your typical Light Sport plane customer ... it is not a 40 something guy who finally had enough money to get the ball going - it is mostly an older gentleman with hundreds of hours flying various GA planes who had to sell his beloved Cessna because he was no longer able to maintain his medical ....

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I’ve always felt that a PPL is just that.  Why create a whole new license and add more confusion, esp around training ?  If I have a medical condition that has the propensity of creating more risk, then my PPL should reveal specific restrictions such as night flying, # of passengers, weight (class) of plane etc.

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16 hours ago, Anticept said:

I wouldn't measure the success by number of certificated pilots. As was said, the difference between sport and private is night flight, and a slightly longer cross country leg, and hood time. That's a pretty insignificant difference in the grand scheme of things. In actuality I would say LSA is attracting people who decide they made it this far, might as well go all the way.......

........Here's a light sport manufacturer, for example, where the units are extremely inexpensive: http://www.msquaredaircraft.com/ . But again, people don't want those kinds. They're looking for "real airplanes" at rock bottom prices, fully loaded, and that's just not going to happen. It's unrealistic

Hi Anticept!

Thanks. Those msquared aircraft are interesting. I didn't know about them. I'm not sure, though, that I'd call $38K to $48K for what would have been called a "fat UL" (even a really well made top quality fat UL as these seem to be) "extremely inexpensive." I guess "inexpensive" is relative to one's budget. My ELSA is two cuts above that ... the low end of "real airplane"...and back around 2005 it was built for about $35K.  So yes.... I agree it was/is unrealistic to have expected the LSA initiative to stimulate production of "more affordable" real aircraft just by declaring they have max takeoff weights under 1320 pounds, etc. But that IIRR was one of the claims of some promoters of LSA.

Well, if not by the number of certificated pilots, what WOULD you measure sport pilot's success or failure by?

Perhaps you'd acknowledge that the dream/hope that it would bring a flood on new folks into GA who had previously been blocked by the greater expense and slightly higher training bar of getting a private pilot license and the cost of owning or renting standard category aircraft has not materialized? No so? IIRR that was one of the big selling points of the initiative. (As the numbers show pilots like me that came into powered aviation ....I flew hang gliders decades ago ..... via the sport pilot license are a drop in the bucket.) As I mentioned, few flight schools jumped on the "let's train sport pilots" idea after they did the numbers. And I know that several that tried to and either wrote it off as "well that didn't go far" and even sold their one SLSA trainer  at a lose, explicitly telling me that there was not enough demand to justify keeping $65 tied up in that plane.

I don't know if you care about or saw any value in the UL activity that was thriving and growing before the LSA rules killed UL trainers. But might you understand and acknowledge that it virtually closed off the door into UL flying for newcomers? Given that it was initially supported by the UL community, I'd call that a failure from that point of view. Your thoughts on that?

Yeah.... There are a few wealthy folks who couldn't or didn't want to do the aeromedical flying some very sophisticated $130 to $~200K LSAs. But they're not the folks the initiative was envisioned to help... those blocked from flying by cost.

Al

 

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On the first point: regardless if you consider it a "fat UL", it's touching on my point: people want a "real airplane" and in the US, that means loading it heavily with gadgets and being fully enclosed. So that's what the market has largely aimed for.

You can contact flight design and order one of their stripped down basic models. You save tens of thousands in doing so. However there's a reason they don't advertise that: it's a waste of time in the US. We like our big enormous trucks, huge houses, massive plots of land, etc. We're just a country that likes things big and powerful, way beyond our actual needs.

I wasn't around in aviation for the LSA initiative. I have no idea what the original goals were. I DO know it was used as a stepping stone for Basic Med. I don't know if that was the intent from the beginning.

Also, as for LSAs: one problem I think that a lot of organizations face is they only buy one as a test bed. Aviation is funky: just having one of a particular model doesn't work, you got to have two or three. You also have to advertise it right.

Before I left new flyers association, we were up to 6 LSAs. It's madly successful. For as many cases where you might say it's a failure, I would point to quite a number of cases of success.

Anyways, as for measuring the success: I can't easily give you an answer. I can still say that measuring it by pilot certificate holders is a fallacy. It's oversimplifying actual industry conditions and is a bit cherry picky.

I also don't know anything about UL rules before LSA. If dual place ULs used to be a thing and LSA changed that, then I would definately put that as a bad mark in the LSA book.

Anyways, I think what I am getting at is that maybe LSA didn't hit all the marks it was originally aimed at. I would just urge caution on where to put the blame for shortcomings and what metrics one should use.

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I'm curious what is the status of student pilot training (collectively all - Sport & PP) around your (group - not any particular person in this thread) airport / area?  I bring this up as I bought my C-150 in 1999 and my county airport was a hot bed of new students, a couple of flights schools, and active rated renters.  Pattern seemed to always have a couple or more birds working touch and go's.  Then enter 2008, it fell of a cliff.  I have been an active flier / owner steady through the last two decades, I can say for Michigan when I'm on 122.8 it was mighty quiet 2008 and the decade after.  I have a friend who I routinely take up, he surprised me by signing up for lessons this year, and solo'd last week.  I notice a lot more traffic at two county airports doing flight training.  I view LSA, along with all GA, taking a hard hit for 10 years, and we're now seeing a comeback.  I saw my first CT around 2005, and I thought what a cool bird, but flying a $14k Cessna, figured I'd never afford one at that sell price.  Now, after depreciation and in a different stage of life, I bought one.  I'm one of the younger fella's in this group, still in my late 40's.  I am thrilled to own a plane I can fly for as long as I care to, and what LSA affords.  Same with E-LSA, and the 16 hour class.  Not for everybody, but a HUGE DEAL to those who opt for this category.  I don't measure that in numbers - but I sure do in happiness.  I am far more happy with E-LSA than standard airworthiness, apples and oranges - numbers are not the whole tell here.

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I can tell you that 122.8 in my neck of the woods is busy. So much so that my airport, Independence State, and Albany about 20 miles away, switched to discrete frequencies in the last few years. Sure to become worse if the pilot shortage is real. 

If the pilot shortage is real, and I think it is, sport pilot applicants may take a hit. Most of the new applicants will not want to remain amongst us bug smashers. They will be going for the big time.

My two cents.

 

 

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Here around Chicago is reasonably busy - there are two Light Sport oriented schools ( utilizing Remos and Evektor planes ) and a number of “legacy” schools - one thing I noticed is that a lot of student type of traffic seems to be coming from foreign student pilots ( judging by their accents ) 

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My airport employed an older Light Sport "Kappa" for lessons... it was very popular and booked solid.  Sadly, the plane was totaled in a grass landing attempt.  I spoke to many of the students, they loved it.  This may not be a popular comment, but I believe all students should be taught in "rudder-intensive" airplanes like Light Sports or tail draggers.  The flying skills I employ flying the FD CTLSi are "finer" than the skills I employed flying the 172 or P-140 for sure.

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I feel light sport was an impulse in the right direction for GA. It and experimental aircraft have kept the avionics business fresh during an era of certified GA museum pieces. Now those same planes are being upgraded with instruments developed for experimental and light sport and the FAA is taking a fresh look at their method of certifying, that's all to the good, but I would have been happier to see them take a comprehensive approach to all of GA instead of nibbling around the edges. 

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