Thoughts for the Morning After, Part I

By ANN Senior Contributing Editor Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien

It had been hanging fire so long that cynics thought it was never going to happen. On July 20, the FAA issued the final NPRM on Sport Pilot and Light Sport Aircraft. Tomorrow, we're going to wake up and face the music.

First, the good news. There are two new types of certification, Special Light Sport Aircraft, which for the first time allows a legal factory-built two-seater, and Experimental Light Sport Aircraft, which is for homebuilt machines. The performance envelope of the light-sport aircraft was opened up a hair over the original proposal. There is also new license, the Sport Pilot certificate, that can be exercised without a medical certificate -- unless you had a medical certificate and lost it, or were denied one. Even then, you might be able to get back in the air.

Now the bad news. I could have taken the barmaid home, but came back alone to write this story.

Seriously, it seems like the FAA has not learned as much as it might have from the twin fiascos of Primary category certification, and Recreational Pilot licensing. Elements of the FAA see this not as a new opportunity to fly, but as an opportunity to bust up to 15,000 of the pilots flying now. Worst of all, the medical-free aspect of Sport Pilot has a humongous Catch-22.

Many, possibly most, of the pilots who had previously lost or been denied Class 3 medicals thought this would be their ticket back into the air. Alas, probably not. The second-order effects of Sport Pilot/Light Sport Aircraft on Part 103 are unclear. Gyroplane pilots will be disappointed with the new ruling, which will not admit factory gyros and which threatens to make instruction, already a problem, even scarcer.

What Was the Big Holdup?

The last three and a half years have been tied up with the executive branch's beady-eyed accountants, the Office of Management and Budget, headed by Joshua B. Bolten, shown below. What did we get for those years of delay? What did they produce for all that effort?

"The rule will cost approximately $158.4 million (discounted) over nearly 10 years. Industry costs will be roughly $144.5 million (discounted), of which $98.9 million (discounted) represents out-of-pocket expenses. Government costs are approximately $13.9 million (discounted). The estimated potential benefits range from $57.7 million to $220.3 million (discounted)."

Exercise for the reader: How would your boss take it if you produced less than one sentence a year? What if that was the output of your whole department? (If you just shrugged, what government agency employs you?)

Where is FAA Coming From?

The disappointments in Sport Pilot become more explicable when you look at it from the FAA's point of view. For the bureaucrats at OKC, this was not a matter of grudgingly yielding up a new freedom of flight -- it was a question of cracking down on those suspicious ultralight drivers. In their press release, the purpose of SP/LSA is that it "...sets safety standards for the 15,000 people who will now earn FAA certificates to operate more than 15,000 existing uncertificated ultralight-like aircraft." FAA Administrator Marion Blakey hammered on that point in the SP/LSA press conference.

In other words, this is being sold externally, and is probably believed by FAA internally, to be a crackdown on those shady, edge-of-the-law operators, the ultralight pilots. Like most things coming out of the FAA in the last decade, and possibly longer, it's a concept for lawyers, not for aviators.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about the Sport Pilot license and the Light Sport Aircraft the rule created.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.sportpilot.org