What's an LSA? Part 1 of 3: The Observer Effect

I have an uncle that asked "What's an LSA?" in response to a lengthy facebook posting of mine.  Actually, that sort of thing is what this blog is for.

The easiest answer is that "LSA" means "Light-Sport Aircraft." But the real answer is a lot more complicated than that. That's why this is post #1 of 3, and that's also why it's been a week since I've posted here.  The simple answer is:

"An aircraft meeting a technical definition laid out five years ago by the FAA"

However, the more complicated answer is:

"An entirely new kind of flying, which has exploded as a new community of manufacturers and pilots, who understand that they will be operating under a different set of rules."

There's been a lot of hootin' and hollerin' about the Light-Sport Rule.  Most people have been shouting from the rooftops that it's a revolutionary renaissance and revitalization in General Aviation, Hooray!  Has it been?  Ennh... maybe not so much. Click here for a great article about the recent booms and busts of the Light-Sport industry.  But I'm not as concerned with the success of these new planes and pilots as I am with the way this part of the industry sees itself, and what it will mean when the usual rules don't apply.

A little history:

1. Pilots have had to be certificated to fly most things recognizable as "airplanes" since the end of WWI, but for a very long time, the FAA has left a certain class of aircraft pretty much alone- the so-called "ultralights."  Essentially, if you wanted to rig a leaf-blower to a hang glider and fly around without killing yourself, the Feds didn't want to have anything to do with it, and left you alone.
2. Industry and users' groups sprang up around these peculiar little machines, such as the Experimental Aircraft Association, the US Ultralight Association, and the US Powered Paragliding Association. In the absence of formal regulation by the FAA, they began regulating themselves.  This was, and remains, a very good idea- they're on a mission to promote awareness and safety of what they do.
3. In an attempt to close the loophole, the FAA created a new way of certifying pilots called a "Recreational" certificate that utterly failed, and was pretty much ignored.
4. So the FAA started over with the "Light-Sport" rule.  Instead of watering down a "Private" Pilot Certificate (which is what they did with the "Recreational" one), they went to the industry and community, found out what they were doing with both aircraft and pilots, and basically made it official.

A little more history:  In 1926, Werner Heisenburg (one of the architects of quantum mechanics) made the case that the act of observing subatomic particles creates a condition which necessarily affects their activity.  The Heisenburg "Uncertainty Principle," which is mathematical relationship buried deeply inside the nature of how we understand reality itself, is often given as an example of the "Observer Effect," in which the act of observation changes the activity or behavior being observed.

Subatomic particles aside, I can tell you that the "Observer Effect" is present in human psychology to an extreme degree.  Having sent hundreds of students on checkrides, I can tell you that people act weird when they know they're being watched and judged.  So do groups of people, and corporations, and entire industries.  So here's what's happened:

• A previously unregulated, undefined, (and pretty much unnoticed) segment of the aviation industry has been "observed" by the FAA.
• That "observation" distinguished this segment of aviation, and in so doing, fundamentally changed it.
• That change has erupted in a flurry of new activity utterly unlike what was happening before.

If you'd wanted to know what a "Light Sport" aircraft was before the LSA rule went into effect, it would probably have looked something like this.  What was previously known as an "ultralight" would have been a tiny machine, meant to carry only one or two people.  It would not have been built by an aircraft manufacturer which subjected it to the usual kinds of tests or design specifications usually required of "certified" aircraft with "standard" airworthiness certificates.  These scary-looking little contraptions, and the people who flew them, were not subjected to the rules the FAA usually required of other aircraft and pilots.  Ultralights were usually attractive only to a particular breed of enthusiast, and the rest of the aviation community, as well as the general public, usually wanted nothing to do with them.

I don't mean to disparage Ultralights or their pilots.  Personally, I think these things are really cool, and they look like lots of fun.  I also want to go on record as a huge fan of the "Experimental" (that is "amateur built") Aircraft or "Kitplane" industry.  I have flown several such aircraft, and I have been a member of and still support the EAA, and I visit their "Sun-N'-Fun Airventure" every April in Lakeland, Florida, as well as various other fly-ins and festivals.  But I can still understand how most people would be scared of these things.  The fact is that this has traditionally been only a tiny fraction of the aviation industry, and has remained that way for decades.  This is the "subatomic particle" before the "act of observation" by the FAA.


I won't go deeply into the definition of the LSA rule here- you can find it in lots of places, including here (just scroll down to where it says "Light-Sport Aircraft").  But basically, if it's an airplane, it only carries one or two people, goes no faster than 120 knots, and has a maximum certified takeoff weight of 1320 pounds.  Lots of existing aircraft fall under that definition.  It includes everything up to the size of a Piper Cub.  The Pietenpol plans-built airplane I'm standing next to in this picture is a good example.  The design was originally published in 1928, and was meant to be powered with an engine from a Model A Ford.

But, when the Definition of an LSA and the new type of "Light-Sport" pilot certificate became law, more than a hundred new makes and models of LSA came to market, from a whole slew of new companies all over the world. I would say that's unprecedented, but it's happened twice before: (1) when airplanes were first invented, and (2) during the Second World War.

So I have to wonder "What's with all the Hubbub... Bub?"  Has there been a sudden explosion of interest in antique designs?  Are slow, underpowered machines suddenly fashionable?  Why would anyone pay $125,000 for an itty-bitty airplane, when better machines can be bought for half as much?  And why would dozens of manufacturers be scrambling to produce hundreds of new models when so many old ones are available?

The simple answers to these questions is that the "Sport Pilot" certificate opens flying up to a whole new group of would-be pilots, and that new materials and technologies make better aircraft possible, but these ideas, also, are a lot more complicated than they seem.  I'll explore this issue, and respond to your comments, in part 2 of 3 of "What's an LSA?" next week.