Sun ‘n Fun 2023 means spring and helps kick off a season of recreational flying. As the year progresses and Oshkosh arrives, we have our fingers crossed for FAA to issue the Mosaic Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). At AirVenture 2022, we were promised the draft proposal by August of this year.
The following month FAA’s Sport Pilot / Light-Sport Aircraft regulation will celebrate its 19th birthday. That means LSA will turn 20 years old in 2024 and by the end of the year we should have Mosaic.
It has been a fast and furious twenty years!
In those two decades, LSA have arrived and flown in nearly every country on Earth.
A few years ago, I evaluated total worldwide market size — see this article or this chart — for LSA or LSA-like aircraft and found more than 66,000 aircraft worldwide. Eight years later, that number may be 80,000 aircraft although I made no attempt to repeat that time-consuming global survey*.
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Cross Country Delivery of AeroJones CTLS Light-Sport Aircraft Represents a “First” in China
American and European pilots can plan a trip across the continent with surprising ease and with great support from air traffic controllers, airport operators, and businesses that serve aviation. No one stops you to ask what you’re doing. You probably question why I even bother to write this because it’s so well understood.
Yes, those of us in countries where private aviation is well-established take for granted the privilege of flying cross country. In fact, it’s one of the great joys we love to experience. It’s a fantastic way to see the country. That’s simply doesn’t happen in China. …Or, it didn’t. Things are changing and one company has forged ahead despite the challenges.
This story involves a Taiwanese-origin, China-based company called AeroJones and involves the delivery of one of their CTLS aircraft to a customer. In the USA, this would never be news. In China, it most definitely is!
AeroJones’ Great Aerial Trek
After purchasing the rights, AeroJones builds the Flight Design CTLS for the Asia-Pacific market.
AeroJones Unveils Their Six-Axis Full-Motion Flight Simulator for CTLS
At a major show in China called Zhuhai visitors saw something: a new 6-axis LSA flight simulator. The developer is AeroJones Aviation, the CTLS manufacturer for the Asia-Pacific region. The company exhibited their simulator to a warm reception.
General aviation is beginning to develop in China lead by airport construction at hundreds of the country’s huge cities. As I’ve written before, I have no doubt the airports will be built, but actual flying at most of them — by Light-Sport Aircraft or other recreational aircraft — seems somewhere off in the future.
China has a massive job ahead. Chinese business people have proven very capable of building many things, but developing a culture of the citizenry flying in light aircraft still has quite a distance to go. However, AeroJones new simulator may help the country take a huge stride forward.
First, Simulate — Then, Go Aloft
Chinese citizens play games, including flight simulators, as much as (or perhaps even more than) Americans do.
CTLS Flying High in Asia-Pacific as AeroJones Gains Full Approval
For most years of Light-Sport Aircraft one aircraft model convincingly lead the parade. That aircraft is broadly identified as the CT-series: CT2K, CTSW, CTLS, and CTLSi. Until CubCrafters caught up and passed Flight Design while the company took a breather to reorganize, the CT-series was the best selling Light-Sport Aircraft in America.
The aircraft also sold well in many other countries, concentrated in European nations; close to 2,000 are flying. One part of the world needed a different approach: Asia-Pacific, including countries such as China, Australia, New Zealand and others. For this region, CT representation needed a fresh face attuned to the local culture.
In a deal started a few years ago, a Taiwan-owned / China-based company named AeroJones Aviation Technology Co., Ltd., negotiated a manufacturing license agreement with Flight Design, the German company that created the CT-series. Money changed hands, training started, and eventually AeroJones fired up their production engine.
AeroJones Aviation
AeroJones Aviation builds the very popular CT-series of Light-Sport Aircraft for Asia-Pacific markets. CTLSi is the latest version… a 98% carbon fiber design with superb performance, roomy cockpit, great useful load, and a parachute as standard equipment.
AeroJones Shows CTLS at New DeLand Showcase Event
One company making a splash at the brand-new DeLand Sport Aviation Showcase event that opened today was AeroJones, occupying the first two spaces inside the entrance. I’ve written about this company before but since spring a striking change has occurred.
Flight Design — originator of the market-leading CT-series of LSA — has completed a court-appointed reorganization. Many of the former company team members will take certain assets and move forward. I will have more on that in a future article.
After the transaction is fully completed AeroJones Aviation will own the CT line including the current CTLS and CTLSi. They will also pursue completion of Flight Design’s four seater, C4, that flew in 2015.
Introducing the new owner of America’s popular CTLS…
AeroJones Aviation is headquartered in Taichung, Taiwan, often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of Taiwan.” After first acquiring a license to build Flight Design aircraft more than two years ago, the company went through a thorough training and evaluation from Flight Design officials.
Flying Clubs as Another Route to Affordable Aviation
In the previous article, I explained how high levels of flight activity can make access more affordable and, for most people, how that would likely be achieved only through some form of shared ownership/use. The use of the term “shared ownership/use” is deliberate because not everybody really wants or feels the need to “own” something they use but, perhaps, believes that there is no other realistic or safe alternative.
This article is based on a close examination of the reasons people give for not being open to any form of sharing and looking at how those barriers might be removed. It will also try to address the second, less discussed, part of affordability, which is “accessibility” to shared use aircraft. There is little benefit to being able to afford what does not, essentially, exist. A good, but somewhat parallel, example of this has been the original iteration of Light Sport Aircraft and Sport Pilot Licenses.
New Buyer for Icon Reported — What Happens Now?
Icon is a global enterprise. While its headquarters remains in Vacaville, California, fabrication is done in Mexico, and ownership is in China. For some years, this American start-up has benefitted from Chinese investment.
How much investment has this California company attracted? Numbers I’ve been quoted vary enormously but all estimates run into many millions of dollars. If these guesses are even close to accurate, Icon has generated more investment funding than nearly any LSA producer. Only one outstrips them. That was a reported $200 million sale of Pipistrel to Textron, owner of Cessna and other aviation brands. I hope the aerospace conglomerate got all they hoped for because that is a super-premium valuation for any LSA company, even one as tech-savvy as Pipistrel.
Icon has performed reasonably well in recent years (“200 Delivered” report) but prior investments in the company require sales volumes that are difficult to reach, especially with a $400,000 price tag.
News Wrap — Lift Offers Part 103 Hexa for Work; Aero Asia Success Points to 30th Anniversary Event
As I recently wrote about Aerial Work for Mosaic LSA, perhaps it’s fitting to write about Part 103 vehicles doing commercial work.
But isn’t flying for hire prohibited in Part 103? Yes, it is.
However, “public use” aircraft do not have to meet FAA aircraft certification regulations nor operating limitations. “Public use” can include activities like police, fire, rescue, border patrol, and similar typically government functions whether provided by federal, state, or local agencies. In short, government departments at all levels get special privileges.
This means little to pilots unless you are one flying for a government agency. For the producers, however, this can mean potentially lucrative sales. In the case of Part 103 multicopter producers it may represent a means of market entry.
In this article I reference an aircraft covered before called Hexa (earlier article, with more aircraft detail), designed and built by Lift Aircraft in Austin, Texas.
Ready to Buy in 2022? What About Factory Support …or Mechanics?
The last airshow of 2021 is over. The Christmas holidays are beginning to dominate everyone’s calendar. Yet recreational pilots — being enthusiastic aviators — are thinking about flying in 2022.
The Covid pandemic of 2020/2021 appears not to have slowed enjoyment of flying for fun… for most of us anyway. I sincerely regret anyone who suffered during this period but sport aviation has held up surprisingly well.
In this article, I will tackle a couple reader questions, the sort I hear all the time. To answer several people with one response, I asked reader John Joyce if I could use his question and name. He consented, so here we go…
Buyers Without Remorse
John started, “Skyleader 600 looks like a great aircraft. I had actually just noticed this model a couple days ago because there is a used one listed for sale on the Web. As a potential first time buyer, I would be interested to have you address the question of service for these smaller manufacturers.