For those not tracking: this article is about the MOSAIC rules, which the FAA announced this week is now approved (Final Rule). In 90 days the new Sport Pilot rules will go into effect and allow Sport Pilots (a certification less stringent than Private Pilot) the ability to fly aircraft of much higher performance. Over the next year, new certification rules will go into effect allowing manufacturers to manufacture much more high performance aircraft under the Light Sport rules. There are some details, but the big picture is that the allowable performance for these “entry level” classes just got a lot higher.
Is it good? Well, a lot of people are cheering the change. The FAA doesn’t normally make things easier for the average Joe. This will make it easier for an inexperienced (but still fairly wealthy) pilot to get their hands on a real hot rod of a plane. There’s probably some additional risk, but the FAA has clearly recognized that one of the biggest dangers too flying a high performance aircraft is having to land fast. 200 kts vs 100 kts doesn’t make a big difference in risk in straight and level flight, but landing at 80 kts vs 55 kts does make a difference.
I don’t know where I stand exactly. It’s a big jump. Surely this is going to cause some old geezer to be screaming through a congested area and not be able to keep up with the ATC traffic calls because he’s never gone this fast before, and he’ll have a midair collision. Surely this is going to cause someone to buy a “light sport” aircraft with 280 hp and a huge prop and they’re going to crash taking off. But I think that overall I’m just being overly cautious, and most Sport Pilots are too poor to afford a plane that burns 15 gallons of avgas an hour, so most of the new planes under MOSAIC won’t be that powerful. I am curious to see what kind of new aircraft become available, and what the long term safety impacts will be.
Edit: for about five minutes my post said “not approved” when I meant to type that MOSAIC is “now approved”
I’m going to add a list of things that I think are going to be cool to see:
- New engine options. Previously getting an engine certified was a big expense, so there wasn’t a lot of advancement. Now I think that higher performing Light Sport aircraft can be made with non-certified engines or components. All electronic ignitions, variable valve timing, electronic fuel injection, it’s all on the table now, and it gets to exist in a factory manufactured plane, not just experimentals.
- New avionics. The light sport category got to put some neat digital avionics in their panels because they weren’t certified. They had portable ADS-B transmitters that were legal. These options will now be open to faster planes too.
- Importing light sports from around the world. Lots of European light sport planes couldn’t be imported in the past because they weren’t certified but were too fast for American light sport rules. Now a lot of them will be able to be imported as soon as the rules allow.
- Cheaper complex trainers. Allowing variable pitch props and retractable gear in the light sport category will hopefully mean there will be a plane that comes along that allows you to build time in the complex category without spending the money that usually comes with these types of planes.
- there’s probably a bunch of other things we’ll see that I haven’t thought of, and I am curious to see whatever that is as well.
I really want to believe that MOSAIC will usher in a revolution of safe, affordable airplanes, but I'm not holding my breath. A lot of the stuff you mention has existed for decades in experimental aviation (electronic ignition, EFI/FADEC, non-TSO avionics, the ability to import factory-assembled but otherwise non-certified light sport aircraft...), and none of them seem to offer compelling cost, performance, and safety advantages over legacy systems.
My cold take is that the only significant, short-term effect will be slightly lowered training standards for low-to-moderate-performance aircraft. It's unclear that this will have any practical effects, since personal airplanes will remain prohibitively expensive to own and operate for the vast majority of us.
Garmin charges an extra $1275 for their G5 instrument if you’re putting it in a certified aircraft vs a light sport. $1850 vs $3095. I’d call that a compelling cost advantage.
FADEC means one less knob the pilot had to worry about in flight and one fewer item on the landing checklist. Probably not a massive performance difference, but I’ll call the sum of the marginal fuel efficiency and engine longevity gains along with the additional safety reduced cognitive load a compelling advantage overall.
Cheaper, modern three axis autopilots are compelling. Repeat this exercise twenty more times with areas all over an airplane and you make a huge difference. Cheap planes aren’t going to swamp the market overnight, just like most of the original LSAs were over $100k when they first came out. But a $100k LSA sure was cheaper than a new SR20 or C172. But they trickled in, and now you can buy a few year old LSA at a decent price. The new crop will start to trickle in over the years too and maybe I’ll be able to afford one when I’m at retirement age.
You’re right about the reduced training standards, but doing it with the old light sport pilot restrictions didn’t cause a massive increase in incidents, so maybe this won’t be that bad. If you fly around rural airports you’ve already been flying around sport pilots and people on BasicMed for several years, so you would have already seen the difference.
In the experimental homebuilt world, just the fact that you (the builder) can choose to equip your plane with < 50 year old technology is compelling. All those things OP mentioned involve trade-offs that the builder needs to consider, but I’d rather have the choice than not (which is the case for certified airplanes).
> Surely this is going to cause some old geezer to be screaming through a congested area and not be able to keep up with the ATC traffic calls because he’s never gone this fast before,
Some "geezer" trying to land at OSH 2025 did this, just this year.
The geezer has an ATP and ATC certifications (Airline Transport Pilot)
The amount of people gatekeeping, coming up with scenarios and hating MOSAIC because of "feels" is so tiring. FAA made these changes based on DATA
One of the more arbitrary and kinda pointless rules. Someone flying a 160 knot 200 hp Piper Arrow with a controllable prop and retractable gear doesn’t need the endorsement. Someone flying a 90 knot fixed gear fixed prop biplane with a 205 hp engine does.
It’s pretty much “use more right rudder”. Although most aircraft with over 200 hp have a constant speed prop so you learn to use manifold pressure and engine speed to set power.
I went from a 145 hp plane to a 235 hp one with about 30 min of instruction during a BFR.
Crap, forgot that sport pilots couldn’t fly within a mode C ring. Well someone will probably do it anyway.
You could always get endorsements as a sport pilot, but complex and high performance didn’t make sense because there were no LSAs that qualified. But tons of people got tailwheel endorsements as sport pilots in the past. Now a bunch of sport pilots are going to get complex and high performance endorsements too.
I’m a sport pilot with a controlled airspace endorsement. It took just two lessons for my instructor to give me the endorsement. I don’t know why anyone would skip it.
No, leaded fuel will continue for several years as they haven’t found a drop-in replacement that will work in the entire existing fleet, and the financial burden of modifying engines is too high for them to mandate the change. Some existing planes are approved to run unleaded fuels but not all.
But MOSAIC probably will result in more aircraft being announced that are designed to run unleaded fuel because you won’t have to use a certified engine and can use something more modern.
The precious light sport rules limited stall speeds to 45 kts. Jumping to 59 kts for sport pilots adds a huge amount of aircraft to the allowable list for a sport pilot.
Indeed. My point was these new LSA landing speeds are essentially the same as the landing speeds for light singles flown by private pilots. No one is landing light singles at 80 knots.
I was picking random numbers to try and spell out that cruising speed isn’t a huge safety risk, but landing speed is. Notice that the slow speed (55 kts) I picked is legal under MOSAIC but the higher unsafe speed (80 kts) isn’t legal, and this illustrates that the FAA kept a fairly sane stall speed limit.
The fact that the stall speed limitation closely matches the existing limits for light singles shows where the FAA draws the safety lines. Although MOSAIC apparently allows twins, they keep the stall speed limitation at a sane number.
The only thing I don’t fully understand is them differentiating between 59 kts for a sport pilot, and 61 kts for a light sport aircraft. It feels a little arbitrary to draw those lines differently.
> The only thing I don’t fully understand is them differentiating between 59 kts for a sport pilot, and 61 kts for a light sport aircraft. It feels a little arbitrary to draw those lines differently.
The NPRM document explains it somewhere around page 200. It’s important to note that it’s 59 knots CAS clean vs 61 knots CAS dirty.
The argument seems to be that a sport pilot is operating with less training and less oversight and so if something goes wrong and they can’t get the aircraft fully configured for landing they’ll still be able to operate and touch down at 59 vs whatever the clean stall speed would be for an aircraft with a dirty stall speed of 61 knots. That margin could be fairly large (10 knots or more) and the difference in energy between 59 and 71 knots is massive.
Any idea if the FAA will change the rules regarding having ADHD and a private pilots license?
It's really disheartening to know that I'm not allowed to fly recreationally from time to time because I take a stimulant medication to help finish university.
The FAA aeromedical philosophy is quite risk-averse for all levels requiring a medical (including BasicMed, which requires an initial medical).
I don’t expect that to change, but I also wouldn’t have expected MOSAIC to be adopted either.
I think your best path is either to fly with an instructor (you don’t need a medical if the instructor is acting as pilot-in-command) or to fly Part 103 ultralights.
I think it’s more likely that the FAA drops the requirement for a third-class medical certificate to get a PPL than that they significantly loosen the diagnosis restrictions. At least they have discussed dropping the requirement in the past.
Light sport licenses don't require a medical - once I can find a light sport instructor I plan on working toward a light sport license, especially with MOSAIC passed
Important note: if you’ve failed a medical, you’re no longer eligible for a light sport license. This is what’s killed Xyla Foxlin’s flying career: her medical was revoked.
I was wandering the same thing. Quite often the insurance sets a much higher standard than what is legal. I had a lot of fun flying a local police helicopter as a commercial helicopter pilot with the police pilot (who only had a private certificate at the time) simply because insurance required a commercial pilot to be present in the cockpit.
By and large the affordability will keep a lot of people from anything too high performance and dangerous. But there will be a few dead doctors who weren’t dissuaded by high premiums and high gas bills.
That doesn’t make sense… the vast vast majority of people could never pay the damages of a serious plane crash into another plane or building, regulations or not.
Then why increase the risk and damages by letting private individuals pilot more dangerous aircraft? There are already avenues for people to fly these aircraft that mitigate the risks.
Is it good? Well, a lot of people are cheering the change. The FAA doesn’t normally make things easier for the average Joe. This will make it easier for an inexperienced (but still fairly wealthy) pilot to get their hands on a real hot rod of a plane. There’s probably some additional risk, but the FAA has clearly recognized that one of the biggest dangers too flying a high performance aircraft is having to land fast. 200 kts vs 100 kts doesn’t make a big difference in risk in straight and level flight, but landing at 80 kts vs 55 kts does make a difference.
I don’t know where I stand exactly. It’s a big jump. Surely this is going to cause some old geezer to be screaming through a congested area and not be able to keep up with the ATC traffic calls because he’s never gone this fast before, and he’ll have a midair collision. Surely this is going to cause someone to buy a “light sport” aircraft with 280 hp and a huge prop and they’re going to crash taking off. But I think that overall I’m just being overly cautious, and most Sport Pilots are too poor to afford a plane that burns 15 gallons of avgas an hour, so most of the new planes under MOSAIC won’t be that powerful. I am curious to see what kind of new aircraft become available, and what the long term safety impacts will be.
Edit: for about five minutes my post said “not approved” when I meant to type that MOSAIC is “now approved”