Holy cow. It was not my intention to disappear after opening this can of worms, honest...
I'm going to reply to a bunch of messages in this one.
I think the medical qualifications need to be more stringent, not less but you probably don't want to hear that.
What, precisely, about flying requires a higher medical standard than driving? Altitude? There's no medical certification to drive up Pike's Peak. Concentration? Driven on a Houston freeway lately? The potential to kill many others? I'm sitting in a hotel room looking over Canal Street in Manhattan; one errant car there could wreak lots of carnage.
The idea that pilots need to be prime physical specimens should have died in the 1930s.
I think the consideration for a wide margin of safety trumps the possible heartbreak of someone having to sell their plane. It's better to mourn the loss of your plane than to have your family mourn the loss of you.
No argument here. However, I see no reason to set that point any higher than is needed to safely drive a car. I'm pretty sure the safety record of folks operating under the sport pilot rule will bear that out. If I didn't think I could operate an airplane safely with my medical issues, I wouldn't have bought one in the first place.
No offense, but since when did this become a "the more the merrier" sort of affair? Either you can meet the standards or you can't. End of story.
True...as long as the standards match the actual demands of flying. If they're higher than needed, then you're artificially restricting the pool of folks who can do things like rent and buy airplanes, pay flight instructors, rent hangars, buy fuel, and all of the other things that keep an aviation economy going. Artificial restrictions on an economy are
bad.
Well, it really is more of a "corporate culture" than anything else that alarms me, not to mention the relative lack of oversight. Just because you CAN build a plane, doesn't mean you should.
That's why there are requirements for inspections by people who know what makes a homebuilt airplane airworthy. There's just as much oversight over a homebuilder than over a manufacturer - and possibly more, since manufacturers usually employ their very own designated airworthiness representatives to sign off the aircraft - which means that a homebuilt is much more likely to have
independent oversight than a factory aircraft.
Especially giving a low hour pilot the controls of a plane that is often marketed to be fast, sport and maneuverable is asking for problems, especially if you make exceptions to allow them to be flown by the new "sport" pilot.
The aircraft that qualify as LSA are no faster than a 172, by regulation. Was I safer as a 170-hour pilot with 30 hours in type in a Tiger and a medical than I am as a 244-hour pilot with 71 hours in my own Zodiac and no medical? The Tiger goes 25 knots faster, carries a bit more useful load, and is significantly less well equipped.
There are going to be pilots who are unsafe; they'll be just as unsafe in a 172 as they would be in an RV-7A.
No offense, but I don't view aviation as an activity for the elite. You're talking to a 27 year old kid who grew up really poor (and still relies on financial aid to pay for school) and scrapes and saves to be able to learn to fly. It should be something to be achieved, not just the next step in the "Gimme, gimme" attitude that is pervasive in this nation. Not everything should be open to anyone simply because they have a pulse and a rectal temp above room temperature.
This is elitism of a different sort: not one of money, but rather one of physical prowess and perceived effort. I've got no problem with making sure people meet real requirements, and that includes real training. I agree that there's too much "gimme" in today's society. That doesn't mean we should make things harder just to make them harder.
Reducing the hours required and commensurately the quality and quantity of training is not a good way to improve safety since it has been show that safety increases (for the most part) with the amount of time one spends at the controls.
Right - but that increase doesn't really happen until several hundred hours of experience. The difference between 20 and 40 isn't measurable. Even a private ticket is a license to learn.
Also the reduction in weight most likely comes at the expense of things that are needed to give one a fighting chance at surviving a crash (structural integrity of the cabin, strong fuel tanks, etc).
We don't have anywhere near the numbers needed to substantiate this conjecture. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, since the Zodiac has been alleged to have a design issue that may be related to not being strong enough. There are at least three structural analyses going on as I type this to substantiate or refute this conjecture. The only results I've seen so far tend to support the argument that the Zodiac is indeed strong enough, despite being lighter in construction than, say, a Cherokee.
Making it so that Bubba Q. Redneck can fly a modern version of a Piper Cub out of the back 40 is simply a way to instill overconfidence and revert us back to the "good ol' days" of GA where plane crashes were a more frequent occurence.
Since when is this a result of the sport pilot rule? If you really think the difference in required training would magically turn Bubba into a safe pilot, you've got an inflated opinion of the value of private-level training.
If you want to be proactive, you need to write the regulations to keep people from having access to things that can hurt or kill them (or more importantly, others).
This pegs the horse exhaust meter. It's the same nanny-state idea that has led to all sorts of nonsense regulations, from bans on ugly guns (
WARNING: I will unilaterally ignore any attempt to turn this into a gun control thread!) to limits on the top speed displayed on a speedometer that have nothing to do with what the vehicle is actually capable of. The last time I checked, this was a free country. That includes the freedom to do things that are stupid, things that can kill oneself, and generally things that do not hurt others. That kind of freedom is fundamentally incompatible with the kind of overarching regulation you advocate.
No offense, but the idea of sharing the skies with some doofus who thinks he's Chuck Yeager because he has his little Cessna LSA is something that does not thrill me in the slightest.
What makes you think that the same doofus won't think he's Yeager in his 172, or Taylorcraft?
I agree - what I've been getting from my FAASTeam participation is that ADM is really being stressed. We seem to be turning out pilots when we should be turning out aviators, or captains. What I find missing from many pilots is not stick and rudder skills, but the sort of awareness and acceptance of the responsibilities placed on the pilot in command.
This is the kind of thing we can and should attempt to teach...but that's all we can do, is attempt. The kind of lesson that teaches a pilot how to make decisions that are safe in the real world, and that he will actually take to heart, tends to be the one that scares him ****less. We can equip him with the tools, but they won't stick until that memorable flight.
But to be honest, it's missing from driver education, and its REALLY missing from boater education (power squadron is pretty good, but there's practically NO requirement for even fundamental seamanship training).
I'm constantly amazed that it's possible to spend money on a good fast Cigarette boat and run around with the throttle wide open, with no required training at all. That's one reason you won't get me out on the water.
I've flown LSA and considered going LS rather than PP. In the end I decided the PP training requirements were worth it. I didn't want to be limited by sunup/sundown and will probably chase the instrument ticket at some point.
Good for you! If you think the private ticket will fit your needs better, go for it.
After getting my certificate, I flew light sport for a little while. I think there are problems in growing the LS culture. (...)
Long story made short, I'm not flying LSA anymore and I'm darn glad I went the PP route.
The problems you cite aren't specific to the sport pilot world. Any pilot can have the same incorrect beliefs you cite.
Poor ADM kills pilots. You don't build that in twenty hours of Light Sport Pilot training nor in forty hours of Private Pilot training. In fact, it takes several hundred hours and even then it may not take hold as having been evidenced in far too many NTSB reports.
Amen. This is something I deliberately keep in the forefront of my thinking. I know damned good and well that my 244 hours total time put me in the range where pilots overcome the initial cautiousness they come out of the checkride with and think they know enough, when they really don't. I try hard to make my decisions not on what I think I can get away with doing, but on what choice is consistent with safety while still getting the job done - and recognizing that the latter may not always be possible.
Uh huh. What about those of us who once met the standards as well as they can be met, but have now grown old? You want to knock this old USAF fighter pilot out of the skies? I'll finally reach an age where I can no longer pass the medical (I haven't yet, but it has to be within the next few years) but will still be quite capable of flying, just like I have for the last 18,000 hours. A little two-holer biplane of the LSA class looks awfully inviting to someone like me.
There are an awful lot of folks in this position. Not everyone flying an LSA is fresh from a 20-hour course and a checkride. Not only that, but Ray's experience will go a long way to keep him safe even in the face of whatever medical issues may crop up - and will give him a much better basis on which to decide when it's time to hang it up than an AME with no time in the cockpit can ever have.
I dunno.. have you seen these LSA panels?
You mean like the one I've attached?
No, it's the realization that Yes, you ARE that stupid, that kills pilots.
Indeed. Pilot stupidity is the greatest killer of all in aviation. Flying is not inherently dangerous, but it's unforgiving, especially of stupidity.
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