Mosaic! …Or No Mosaic (Yet)? — That Is the Question

OK, so we have a new U.S. President and Trump often promised to “Eliminate 10 new rules for every new one proposed.”

On the campaign trail, this was only promises, such as every politician makes. Now comes reality. Will our new president do what he said?

Regular readers will recognize Roy Beisswenger. Roy and I made several trips to Washington, DC in an attempt by LAMA, the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association, to encourage FAA to make changes to the then-10-year-old Sport Pilot / Light-Sport Aircraft regulation. Our work, starting in 2014, began a few years before anyone knew anything about Mosaic. Being involved for ten years provided lots of knowledge about FAA rule making, leading to actions later known as Mosaic.

In his day job, Roy is the proprietor of Easy Flight, the nation’s premiere powered parachute educator and flight trainer. Follow the link to learn more.

To learn more about those advocacy trips, what we asked for, and what was finally included in FAA’s newest rule, follow this Mosaic link. In these articles you can find many other links to speed your review of Mosaic. Government regulations are rarely easy to follow so we attempted in several media forms to bring awareness to what FAA was doing.

Is Mosaic to Be Frozen?

Is a regulatory freeze going to slow the release of Mosaic? Based on what Roy reports in some detail, I believe that is a high likelihood.

President Trump just signed an order called, “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review.” Here’s the full White House text. Because the Mosaic rule has not been published yet, it appears probable that the proposed regulation will be halted, at least for a period of review.

Yet that’s not all.

In the Freeze Review Roy notes that it states, “Rules should be looked at after they are published and before they become effective.” Roy added, “This is a major change in the way the federal government publishes rules.

Currently, new rules are proposed, then discussed by government and the public. Afterward, FAA huddles and writes the proposed rule. When done, a notice of proposed rulemaking is offered for public comment. After the comment period closes, the federal agency goes quiet to revise the rule without outside interference. After the rule is published, the public can comment no more.

While Trump’s regulatory changes may be worthy, any change to the way Washington works means regulations take longer. Since pilots are somewhat forced to wait for regulation to emerge before they can buy exciting new airplanes, any alteration that permits pilots to see the finalized rule before it is released seems laudable — though this necessarily extends the time needed.

In short, the odds of further delay in Mosaic’s release appears probable. Stay alert!

Roy’s 11-minute video below clarifies much more on this Regulatory Freeze Pending Review…

In the following video, longtime aviation journalist Roy Beisswenger provides background and clarity on a possible Mosaic freeze.

Those that prefer to read what he said or who want to review specifics can find the entire video text below.

Full Text of Above Video

By Roy Beisswenger
January 21, 2025

MOSAIC Paused

It has been widely reported that the MOSAIC rule was expected to be published by the middle of 2025. But, President Trump just signed an executive order freezing the publication of any new federal rules, pending a review. Let’s look at the freshly signed executive order and see how that affects MOSAIC and its timing.

Hello! My name is Roy Beisswenger and by the end of this video you’re going to know what’s in the president’s new executive order called “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review” and how it may affect MOSAIC.

First, some background. MOSAIC stands for Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification. The FAA describes MOSAIC as

An amendment to the rules for the manufacture, certification, operation, maintenance, and alteration of light-sport aircraft. The FAA says that the proposed amendments would enable enhancements in safety and performance and would increase privileges under a number of sport pilot and light-sport aircraft rules. These enhancements include increasing suitability for flight training, limited aerial work, and personal travel. MOSAIC would expand what aircraft sport pilots may operate.

I’ve gone into depth presenting the details of MOSAIC. The short version is that MOSAIC is overall a pretty good rule, but is flawed as it was presented to the public in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking or NPRM.

The NPRM was published in the summer of 2023. Yes, that long ago. The comment period came to a close in early in 2024. Since then, the rule has been studied by the FAA with a mind to incorporating or rejecting changes suggested by the public. And there were quite a few suggestions! 1,357 comments to be exact! Many of those comments were different people suggesting the same thing. Some comments probably were conflicting with other comments. I’m sure it was a lot for the FAA to sort out. Then there has been the editing of the rule and the intra-agency process that comes with that, especially since MOSAIC cuts across so many parts of the FAA.

But the work isn’t finished. And even if it was finished, it wasn’t published. That means that the Regulatory Freeze will affect it. Let’s look at the language of the freeze and see what may apply.

The 1st paragraph of the executive order says…

(1)  Do not propose or issue any rule in any manner, including by sending a rule to the Office of the Federal Register (the “OFR”), until a department or agency head appointed or designated by the President after noon on January 20, 2025, reviews and approves the rule.  The department or agency head may delegate this power of review and approval to any other person so appointed or designated by the President, consistent with applicable law.  The Director or Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (the “OMB Director”) may exempt any rule that he deems necessary to address emergency situations or other urgent circumstances, including rules subject to statutory or judicial deadlines that require prompt action.

This will delay things simply because it takes time to hire new department and agency heads. First, the candidates have to be found. I’m sure many candidates have already been screened since the election in November. But the process of Senate confirmations has only just begun. I don’t know how high of a priority the department of transportation or the federal aviation administration is for confirmations. But the period may take well over 60 days. In fact, this executive order may be part of President Trump’s leverage to get his candidates for these positions confirmed by the Senate.

After the department and agency heads are selected and confirmed, they have to review all of the new rules. Of course they will have their own teams for that, but it takes time to hire those people. So it will take time to review all of the individual rules.

The 2nd paragraph of the executive order says…

(2)  Immediately withdraw any rules that have been sent to the Office of the Federal Register but not published in the Federal Register, so that they can be reviewed and approved as described in paragraph 1, subject to the exceptions described in paragraph 1.

This may or may not affect MOSAIC, I really haven’t checked on where the rule is right now. I believe it’s still with the FAA.

The 3rd paragraph of the executive order says…

(3)  Consistent with applicable law and subject to the exceptions described in paragraph 1, consider postponing for 60 days from the date of this memorandum the effective date for any rules that have been published in the Federal Register, or any rules that have been issued in any manner but have not taken effect, for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise.  During this 60-day period, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider opening a comment period to allow interested parties to provide comments about issues of fact, law, and policy raised by the rules postponed under this memorandum, and consider reevaluating pending petitions involving such rules.  As appropriate and consistent with applicable law, and where necessary to continue to review these questions of fact, law, and policy, consider further delaying, or publishing for notice and comment, proposed rules further delaying such rules beyond the 60-day period.

This paragraph seems to be pretty big to me. Why? Because it signals a new way of doing business. What the president is saying here is that rules should be looked at after they are published and before they become effective. This is a major change in the way the federal government publishes rules. The way it currently works is that Rules are proposed. There is a discussion between the government and the public. Then there is a time while the FAA huddles and writes the proposed rule. When that’s done, the government publishes a notice of proposed rulemaking. Then there is a comment period. That comment period is usually the main opportunity for the public to comment on a proposed rule. After the comment period is over, the FAA or whatever organization goes into hiding and writes the rule without any outside interference. At least allegedly. Then the rule is published. After the rule is published, there is no opportunity for the public to comment or change the rule without starting the whole process over again. In the case of Sport Pilot, it took over a decade to even start the process. In fact it is already twenty years since sport pilot first became a rule and we are just now getting close to finally, hopefully, solving some of the problems with the original rule.

What the president seems to be saying here is that the public gets another chance to respond to a rule before it becomes an active rule. This could be a big deal that will affect all kinds of rules coming from the federal government. For MOSAIC, it means that there are probably a lot of things that the FAA really wants in the rule but the public doesn’t want. If the FAA has to publish the rule and then go through another comment period, this could slow down the effective date of the rule.

Of course this may be just a temporary process to slow down potentially bad rules that have  already been published but aren’t quite effective yet.

I have to say that I would like to see this become a regular part of the rulemaking process. In the case of the FAA, it would give pilots, aircraft manufacturers and other interested parties a chance to hold the FAA accountable for their final rulemaking products. I remember back when the Sport Pilot rule was first published. The preamble of published rules is where the FAA addresses comments from the general public. I and others made several suggestions. Many of my suggestions were based on observations from Australian pilots who already had a similar system in place. They warned me that several aspects of the Sport Pilot rule would really hurt Powered Parachutes. They were speaking from experience.

Ultimately, the FAA never really addressed those concerns. All they said was that the FAA does not concur. As it turns out, I was right about the effects Sport Pilot would have on powered parachutes and the FAA was wrong. But there never has been any accountability. And there never was a chance to ask the FAA what reasoning they had behind the statement, “The FAA does not concur.”

The FAA also said at the time that it did not concur that gyroplanes should be allowed to be manufactured as special light sport aircraft. That mistake is taking 21+ years to correct, and it still isn’t yet officially corrected.

Personally, I don’t believe that any agency should be able to say that they don’t concur with a public comment without some kind of justification. Saying “the FAA doesn’t concur” seemed arrogant and dismissive at the time, especially since the FAA turned out to be dead wrong.

Perhaps allowing another comment period after the rule was published would have prevented some of that.

An ability to challenge a federal agency AFTER a rule is published is a big positive that may slow things down in the short term, but will make the FAA and the rest of the government more responsive to the public in the future. What do you think? Should the rulemaking process be more responsive to the public or are things just fine as is? Let me know in the comments.

The 4th paragraph of the executive order says…

(4)  Following the postponement described in paragraph 3, no further action needs to be taken for those rules that raise no substantial questions of fact, law, or policy.  For those rules that raise substantial questions of fact, law, or policy, agencies should notify and take further appropriate action in consultation with the OMB Director.

This means that MOSAIC could sail swiftly through the process. But I don’t know that it will. I can see some things being challenged, like the FAA’s discrimination against aircraft they don’t fully understand like gyroplanes, powered parachutes, and weight-shift control trikes. Then there is the arbitrary and unnecessary new rules on light sport aircraft noise, which was literally put in there because they could. Not because there was a demonstrated need. That unnecessary rule will cost manufacturers and the public money to conform to.

The 5th paragraph of the executive order says…

(5)  Comply in all circumstances with any applicable Executive Orders concerning regulatory management.

This is a catchall that seems to imply that more is coming. Overall, this may be a very good thing. Perhaps this will motivate the FAA to reconsider public comments, especially the ones that point out real flaws in MOSAIC. Hopefully, “The FAA does not concur” will be augmented with real reasons, if those real reasons even exist.