The adventure, an article about flying and learning to fly 

On July 20, 2004 the director of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Ms. Marion Blakely, signed the final regulations for the Sport Pilot/Light Sport Aircraft rule into being and the bottom rung of the US aviation ladder was finally added to the list of privileges that could be earned by individuals that yearn to fly.  After many years of collaborative efforts between the FAA, the current ultralight exemption holders and the manufactures of the varied, and extraordinary, light sport aircraft (LSA), the new sport pilot rule is meant to provide students of aviation alternatives of how and what they choose to learn to fly.  You may wonder why it took over a hundred years to add this first rung to the US aviation ladder?  The answer is really very easy to understand and not readily understood.  The industry has demanded it. The European marketplace and airspace have been participating in a similar {quote_top}program for years; they refer to light sport as light planes or micro-lights and that is why most of the airplane single engine land (>87 knot) light sport aircraft are being imported from the European countries. For example you will see Special Light Sport Aircraft (SLSA) available from Italy, Germany, Spain, Czechoslovakia and more. 

You will see very few SLSA, if any, manufactured in the US and that is because these planes have been flying in Europe for years and have been able to fast track through the US aircraft inspection and certification process because the required testing has been documented and can be presented to the FAA for certification.  As you can imagine the FAA certification process is highly regulated and the bottom line is the feds want the aircraft that is available to the US public to be safe. 

As of 2004, there were 618,633 active pilots in the US, according to the FAA.This number has been declining slowly over the past two decades, down from a high of over 827,000 pilots in 1980. The sport pilot concept is simple … it allows flight instructors to train pilots for a simple mission, in a simple aircraft. And do it safely!  What this rule does, in essence, is provide an external catalysis for general aviation as we know it in the US and the rule will multiply the flying opportunities of prospective and current pilots.  The diverse categories of light sport aircraft are less expensive to own and operate and the time frame in which to learn is cut by half from the US standard airplane category. Let’s face it, flying is an expensive adventure and it is getting more expensive each and every year.  The minimum training hours for a private pilot certification is 40 hours, as mandated by the FAA; that being said, the national average for a beginner student to private pilot certification is 78 hours of instruction.  As airplanes are evolving with new technology, so is the need for more and more hours of training.  This certainly is not meant to be a bad thing, but it is easy to see how the added hours of flight training can eat into your flight training budget and even be a deterrent from even beginning. In the early 1980’s learning to fly could reasonably cost a student $3,000.00; today that amount is doubled if not even higher.  Operational and maintenance cost of the standard category aircraft is the main culprit for the price increase and it is easy to see how an added 30 + hours of flight instruction can start to add up. So if we look at purely the financial benefits of training as a sport pilot, the cost of beginner to sport pilot is once again in the $3,000.00 ball park in the airplane category and even less in some of the other light sport aircraft categories. 

What’s even more exciting is your flight training and hours logged in the airplane single engine land > 87 knot category (ASEL>87 knot) in a light sport aircraft can be applied to your training as a private pilot!  This is amazing and a fact that has not been readily published.  That is how we can justify that a sport pilot certificate truly becomes the first rung on the aviation ladder. Get your sport pilot certificate and move your way up the ladder!  Or you can also move laterally through the different categories of light sport aircraft that fall into light sport and are utilized by the sport pilot.  You can literally move from the simplest form of aviation right on up through the heavy iron if that is truly your dream.  Or you can stick with the light sport.  Flying in the US has never been safer and never ever been more diversified. So why learn to fly?  Man has always dreamed of soaring in the sky. 

The Wright Brothers made the first powered flight in a pilot controlled aircraft on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk. If you look back at that earlier statistic of over 600,000 active pilots registered in the US in 2004 and the transformation of aircraft available to pilots over this short century of time … well, that’s an explosion.  You can’t help wonder if technology has been the main driving force or perhaps it is just the simple fact that flying is fun!  Flying is exciting! And the process of learning to fly is pure satisfaction. Sport Pilot is in its infancy stages and is promising to be the next big bang in the private aviation sport and the aircraft industry.

NEXT: How to start with Sport Pilot