Proposed Rule Looks to Overhaul LSA Certification

As reported, early on by ANN, the FAA has made public a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) pertaining to the long-awaited MOSAIC aircraft certification initiative.

A stereotypically pithy government acronym connoting Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certificates, MOSAIC is intended to contemporaneously expand the utility of Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) and opportunities for sport pilots. The FAA will accept public comments on the NPRM for ninety-days after the official date of its publication in the U.S. Federal Register.

In brief, the proposed rule sets out to increase current regulatory parameters germane to Light-Sport Aircraft. MOSAIC seeks to replace extant arbitrary weight limit with a ductile assessment protocol predicated primarily upon stall speed. Such a revision would facilitate certification of aircraft massing as much as three-thousand pounds.

For fixed-wing airplanes, the new definition specifies a clean stall speed (Vs1) of 54-knots Calibrated AirSpeed (CAS), a maximum level flight speed (VH) of 250-knots, and a maximum seating capacity of four occupants—all of which represent increases over the current rule. All additional certification parameters will be governed by industry consensus standards, as is presently the case.

Sport pilots will be able to fly any aircraft meeting the antecedent definition, and continue to carry one person, other than the pilot, regardless of seating capacity--up to four seats. Moreover, the proposed rule empowers appropriately-endorsed sport pilots to fly aircraft with retractable landing gear, constant-speed propellers, and/or complex aircraft. Sport Pilots would be permitted, also, to fly at night; however, they will need either current medical or BasicMed certificates to do so. EAA intends to further examine the aforementioned medical requirement for night flying and propose alternatives.

The NPRM comprises numerous additional provisions to which the EAA Advocacy Team continues to ply its collective expertise and experience for purpose of gaining further understanding of the proposed rule’s long-term implications. Superficially, MOSAIC appears to occasion a meaningful and much-needed regulatory response to an LSA segment grown beyond the expectations of both industry and government stakeholders.

EAA chairman and CEO Jack J. Pelton remarked: “MOSAIC had its genesis with a conversation between EAA and FAA officials nearly a decade ago, as we focused on safely creating more aviation opportunities for those who wanted to participate. Now that the NPRM has been released, we are seeing the results of the hard work and effort that EAA and FAA have put into this game-changing rule. We will continue to study it closely and supply focused comments to the FAA.”

FMI: www.eaa.org