Comments

I came back to general aviation later in life. I looked around and found a place to train that had an LSA. I specifically wanted an LSA because I wanted a new plane with a glass panel. Now this may be silly, but it is the reason I got back into flying. 25 years ago I trained in a beat up old tomahawk, with a CFI that considered yelling at the student good for them. I personally know lots of places where this is still true. This time I trained in a modern plane, with a CFI that actually wanted to teach aviation, not show how cool he was. Last fall I finally finished my PPL, and now fly a steam gauge DA-20. The club I am in has LSAs, DA-20s, and 172's as trainers. All three types of trainers are heavily used. With very little real experience I will offer this opinion. LSA's bring new people to the flying community. A lot of these folks are drawn by the new technology. Some folks just want to get their sport license. Some like me go on and get their PPL. If LSA's bring in new people, then I think they are serving a very needed service to the GA market. In addition, it looks like some part of the LSA certification process may eventually wind its way into the rest of the GA market. This would be a huge win, bringing down the price of the GA fleet. Let's be serious. The bells and whistles LSA cited above costs new between 125-200k. A new DA-20 starts at something like 225k. Sure you can buy older GA aircraft that are great for training. Some folks won't fly them and this is a loss to the GA market. I say leave the LSA market to sort itself out, and quit tossing rocks. We are a small community, let's work together to improve GA for all. Cheers Geoff