Making Aviation More Accessible Remains the Name of the Game

Flying has long since been something difficult to break into unless you grew up around aviation, had some connections, or just wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept riding your bike out to the airport until someone took you for a ride to get you to stop pestering them.

It’s much easier today to get exposed to GA with aviation STEM programs in schools beginning at kindergarten, desktop flight simulators, aviation training devices, and a host of other increasingly realistic digital activities, plus programming by organizations like EAA, CAP, AOPA, and others geared toward young people. 

When the light sport aircraft (LSA) category became a reality in 2004 (in the U.S.), one of the goals was to breathe new life into aviation by making it more affordable and, therefore, easier to access. It was a wonderful concept to help lower the barriers to entry for both manufacturers and pilots.

For OEMs, the timeline and staggering cost of bringing a new aircraft to market had been significantly reduced through the application of consensus standards. For would-be pilots, barriers were lowered too in the form of a sport pilot certificate that did not require the stringent FAA Class III medical and could be earned in 20 hours, approximately half the time the FAA required for a private pilot certificate.

Time and expense are typically high on the list of reasons why about 80 percent of student pilots fail to finish their training.

On paper, LSA seemed like a good concept to open the aviation door to more people, and there was the potential for exciting new products. Yet, in my opinion, the execution of the LSA category in its original form was deeply flawed. Primarily because what seemed to me like an arbitrary weight limit of 1,320 pounds (1,430 pounds for floatplanes) excluded aircraft such as the Cessna 150/152, Piper Tomahawk, and Beech Skipper to name a few, from the category due to the weight limit.

An initial LSA plan that grandfathered in an entire fleet of legacy aircraft, many of which were already in the training fleet, could have helped flight schools immediately start generating more revenue through new students without increasing cost. Instead, flight schools were placed in an odd position where they could train sport pilots in non-LSA (heavier and faster) aircraft, but the check ride was required to be in an LSA aircraft.

Training students in aircraft they wouldn’t be permitted to fly after earning their ticket, not training them in an LSA aircraft needed for the check ride, or forcing a flight school to purchase an LSA-eligible aircraft all seemed to me like half-baked ideas that did little to move the needle.

But LSA rules did create a new class of aircraft, and thankfully now, the FAA is moving toward making sweeping changes to the LSA category in the form of MOSAIC (Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification) to make it more practical. The FAA Reauthorization Act started the clock ticking on when a decision must be finalized.

MOSAIC, as currently proposed, would broaden the LSA category from two-place, 1,320-pound, 120 knot aircraft to four-place, around-3,000-pound, 250 knot aircraft. The key limiting factor under MOSAIC is clean stall speed (V_S1) of 54 kcas. Considering the aircraft that fall into this category, any flight schools in the country with a Cessna 172 should be able to start training sport pilots.

Further, sport pilot privileges would be expanded to include flying at night, flying under IFR (provided they have been trained and endorsed to do so), and even some commercial flying (although they are limited to carrying one passenger, regardless of how many seats are in the aircraft).

Few things in aviation seem to go as planned the first time. But even failures are part of the continuous improvement process that leads to success.

In this case, the original LSA initiative of 2004 may not have achieved what everyone hoped, but look at what it’s evolving into with MOSAIC. Enhancements to the LSA category, expanded privileges for sport pilots, and modifications to BasicMed will keep us flying longer, in the aircraft we enjoy, and make aviation more accessible.

This column first appeared in the November Issue 952 of the FLYING print edition.