Why do CFI's Discourage Sport Pilot

[QuiQuog]

So if one of the stated reasons for the sport pilot category is to increase interest in general aviation by encouraging people to get into flying by costing less up front, taking roughly half the training time and not having to bother with a medical, why does it seem that instructors are always trying to talk me into private pilot? Ive talked to a few flight instructors about flight training for a sport pilot certificate and they all question why I want to do that. They state the same reasons that I've read all over this and other boards; It doesn't take that much more training/time/money/skill; if you're healthy then why not get the medical; you'll be limiting yourself to small planes; blah, blah blah. And all the others, you've all heard all the different reasons.

My cynical gut tells me that it's because they want a student who will take longer to train so they will keep getting a paycheck. I got that feeling when I asked about getting sport pilot training in a tailwheel so that I wouldn't have to do it separately later. I was told that it wouldn't be wise to put a new student in a tailwheel because they were so much harder to control on the ground. Better to get used to flying first. The thing was that they only had tailwheel sport planes.:mad2: Like it was tailor made to upsell students to ppl.

So now I'm 20 hours into my PPL and I'm realizing that I would be close to completing my sport training, but I'm not even half way through private yet. It's frustrating that the lures that brought me into flying were snatched away like a cheap bait and switch. I really want to be flying and exploring the skies, getting my kids excited about flying and increasing GA's numbers. Instead I'm slogging around in the training area. I think that the GA community should forget about trying to upsell everyone to private and focus on sport pilot for what it was intended to be. A cheaper, faster, easier way to get people into the air. Once they're in the community they can pursue more ratings as they desire.

Just one pilot in the light sport category will expose gobs of others to GA, either by giving rides, talking about it at a poker game, hauling a foldable wing airplane down the street, etc... Washing a plane in the driveway will draw a billion more glances than waxing a boat. Once they hear how easy, inexpensive and fun it is, they may just trade in their Harley jacket for a headset. And there's no substitute for having the kids want to follow in daddy's footsteps.

So why discourage that?

 

[Jim Logajan]

Just wondering, are there any USED SLSAs that sell for $20,000 to $40,000? I know that is a stretch at this time, but do you think any SLSAs that were produced around the time since the SP/LSA rules were born would have their prices depreciated to that price range by now?

The FAA has this list of type certificated airplanes that include models that would be in that cost range - though they are all rather old:

http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/gen_av/light_sport/media/ExistingModels.pdf

EAA has a list of more recent models that can be reviewed to see what turns up:

http://www.sportpilot.org/learn/slsa/

 

[Jim Logajan]

There is ZERO demand for LSA aircraft if the third class medical goes away.

Completely inaccurate statement.

That is putting it mildly. Since there were dozens of aircraft models (certificated and experimental) that met LSA aircraft standards decades before anyone had dreamed up the concept, there will be plenty of market left open for existing LSA models if the third class medical goes away. Some descendents of LSA models may grow in weight or speed, but that's to be expected.

Among those of us who understand the need to buy "right sized" aircraft for our needs (in my case 1 or 2 seats max) the LSA will still fill a need. I like low stall speeds for a number of utility reasons. I understand that high lifting capacity comes at a price in acquisition and operating costs even when it isn't being utilized, so that is a consideration that favors aircraft designed to meet LSA specs. I don't think I'm alone in this sort of thinking.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Those 2 seaters were really flying off the shelves, the C152, Tomahawk, Skipper. New ones were selling like hot cakes I tell you. Especially the ones that have artificial gross weight and speed limitations for no other reason than mandated by law.

Are the new non-LSA 4 seat (and greater) Cessna and Pipers still selling like the proverbial hot cakes?

By the way - for a lot of 2 and 4 seat aircraft the LSA 120 kt speed limitation appears to be redundant. But that is a matter of the physics of the situation since at around that speed is something of a knee in the power/drag requirements.

As to artificially lowered gross weight - I can think of only a few experimental models that applies to. Aircraft like, say, the CH-701 or Kitfox and their kin naturally met the gross weight requirement a decade or more before LSA was proposed.

Lastly, a suggestion - you might want to be more careful before making hard and absolute claims on the Internet so that you don't have to resort to rhetorical sneers as follow-up when presented with facts that indicate your absolutist claims don't match observable reality.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Maybe I missed it, but how many people earned SP last year? How many earned PP last year? Any way to pull the SP->PP numbers out?

All such data can be found starting from this web page, wherein you can download an Excel spreadsheet containing tables of all sorts of airmen stats:

https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/civil_airmen_statistics/

Here's a screen snapshot from the 2015 spreadsheet, table 17: