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jacewilliams1 · 4 years

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Light Sport Aircraft aren’t selling well, but the LSA rule has still worked

In 2014, I stirred up a hornet’s nest by proclaiming “the LSA rule is a failure.” My argument was that the new breed of airplanes were moderately successful in keeping older pilots flying, but they had done nothing to inspire a new generation of aviation enthusiasts. Many readers (well over 100 at last check) considered this sacrilege and weren’t afraid to tell me how wrong I was. Others thought it was outrageous to try to draw conclusions so early.

Six years later, some readers have asked for an update to that article. Have Light Sport Aircraft (LSAs) taken off in popularity since then? Are Sport Pilot certificates more common now that the economy is stronger? At the risk of provoking another argument, my review of the data suggests no. The Light Sport world is still alive, but it’s a niche industry with few breakout winners. That’s not just a function of youth, either: the original Light Sport Aircraft rule has been with us for over 15 years now, plenty of time to get a read on things.

First, though, let’s be precise about what we’re measuring. Discussions about “light sport” flying include both LSAs as an airplane category and the Sport Pilot as a pilot certificate level. These are related ideas but separate; a commercial pilot can fly an LSA, but a Sport Pilot cannot fly a Cirrus.

Failures

As a certificate, the Sport Pilot certainly hasn’t set the world on fire. Less than 200 were added to the FAA rolls in 2019, compared to 27,000 Private Pilots. That statistic doesn’t tell the whole story, since many more pilots are flying under Sport Pilot privileges with a higher level certificate (for example as a Private Pilot “downgrading” to the looser medical standards). For those older pilots the new certificate is certainly welcome, but calling that a win feels like moving the goalposts: a key aim of the new rule was to welcome new pilots to the industry with lower training requirements. That’s simply not happening. In a typical year, a busy Florida flight school can add more pilots than the entire Sport Pilot training industry.

There are dozens of LSA models, but none have really caught on.

As a type of airplane, Light Sport Aircraft have been a little more successful. Just under 700 LSAs were registered last year, according to the always-interesting Dan Johnson website. That leaves the total LSA fleet at about 8,800, which sounds impressive. The footnotes matter, though. These numbers include “Sport Pilot kit aircraft,” a broad term that includes experimental airplanes that can be flown by a Sport Pilot—not true LSAs.

In fact, these kit aircraft account for the vast majority of LSA registrations last year. For “factory built” LSAs, the numbers are pretty small: only 41 Icon A5s, 60 Tecnam LSAs, and 63 Flight Design CTs were delivered last year. I’m not cherry-picking statistics; these are the best-selling models. The closing of the Sport Aviation Expo last year certainly isn’t a positive sign, either.

For comparison, Cirrus, Cessna, Piper and Diamond delivered over 900 piston singles last year. Curse those expensive SR22s and Skyhawks if you like, but they are selling much better than most factory-built LSAs. Heck, even Robinson helicopters sell better than most LSAs (142 piston model R22s and R44s were sold last year).

Causes

Why have LSA sales been so anemic? There are plenty of reasons, but three stand out. Most notably, prices have stayed stubbornly high, removing one of the key benefits the category was supposed to offer. The Icon A5 seaplane is the most dramatic example, with a price that has exploded from under $150,000 at launch to more than $380,000 today, but it’s not the only one. That sexy Carbon Cub SS can easily top $250,000 with popular options. Even utilitarian models typically cost more than $150,000 with standard equipment.

Are LSA manufacturers simply ripping off customers? It sure doesn’t seem like it: these are not high margin businesses, and most are small companies that struggle to break even. The typical complaints about product liability, low volume production, and regulation apply here, but another cause of high prices is that owners simply want these airplanes to do more than they were designed to do. “Needle, ball, and airspeed” makes a great catchphrase, but most buyers prefer “glass cockpits, datalink weather, and autopilots.”

A glass cockpit and an autopilot in a two-seat taildragger? It’s surprisingly common in LSAs.

Whether an airplane is a good value or not depends on what you compare it to. While a $250,000 LSA represents a significant savings over a brand new Cessna, that’s not the real competition. A prospective airplane owner is more likely to compare an LSA to a used Part 23 airplane, like a Piper Archer. A quick search finds some attractive models available for less than $70,000—and remember these are four place airplanes with modern IFR avionics. Yes, the airframes are older, but for the money invested they still offer a much better value.

Another reason for weak sales is flight schools, a key target for LSAs in the early days, since they were supposedly hungry for a new type of training airplane. Unfortunately, that market hasn’t really materialized. Some schools have found success with airplanes like the RV-12, and Sport Pilot-only training centers do exist. The current boom in pilot training, however, is powered by Cessna and Piper. In fact, Skyhawks are so popular right now that prices of used ones have skyrocketed (if you own a 172S, you should answer the phone!). Piper even introduced new training versions of their most popular airplane, years after cancelling a short-lived LSA program.

One final frustration relates to maintaining and upgrading LSAs, which has proven to be trickier than expected. Because the airplane manufacturer must approve most upgrades, owners are very much dependent on the factory for support. Many LSA owners have learned this lesson the hard way with ADS-B Out, a relatively minor upgrade that has required serious paperwork changes for some owners. So an airplane category that was supposed to offer flexibility has, in some cases, been harder to maintain than a 50-year old Beech.

The new cool kids

In a practical sense, the ultimate verdict comes from customer attention and business investment. In both cases, the industry has moved on from LSAs and Sport Pilots. Electric airplanes and vertical takeoff (VTOL) designs are the hot new ideas, with venture capital flooding into new companies with futuristic designs. The solution for “democratizing aviation” seems to be cheap octocopters and urban heliports, not two-seat sport airplanes. And pilots? The future envisioned by the most starry-eyed tech boosters involves no pilots at all. Don’t get me wrong: I find these proposals to be outlandish and naive. Most of these are probably years off (and many won’t make it at all), but they are where the action is right now.

Experimental airplanes, like the Van’s RV-10, are the hottest segment of the market.

While we await our Jetsons future, it’s worth recognizing the real winner in personal aviation: experimental aircraft. This is where low cost innovation is taking hold and where general aviation pilots are most excited. You can go a lot faster than 100 knots, you can fly IFR, and you can even carry four people in some models. The most exciting new Cub design isn’t the LSA model, but the souped up Carbon Cub. For traveling, the Van’s RV-10 offers performance similar to a Cirrus but at 1/3rd the price. There are plenty of other options too, from the SubSonex personal jet to the Zenith CH750 bush plane.

Customers are voting with their wallets. More than 10,000 RVs are flying today, a number that has more than doubled since 2008. The LSA registration numbers above show a long list of kits, not factory-built S-LSAs. They are kit airplanes first and foremost, and if they happen to satisfy the LSA rule, so much the better.

A silver lining

It’s not all bad news. One reason LSAs haven’t found momentum is that, like a good football coach at halftime, the rest of the general aviation industry has reacted. In this sense, the Sport Pilot and LSA rules have been successful—because they have inspired meaningful change elsewhere.

BasicMed is the most obvious example. The “driver’s license medical” that comes with the Sport Pilot certificate hasn’t proven to be a major safety risk, so the FAA felt a lot more comfortable extending this concept to Part 23 airplanes in May 2017. No, BasicMed isn’t quite as relaxed as the Sport Pilot rules for medical certification (one reason Sport Pilots will hang around), but it’s a major step in the right direction. AOPA estimates that over 50,000 pilots are flying under BasicMed—impressive adoption for a relatively new rule, and lots of pilots who don’t have any use for a Sport Pilot certificate.

Beyond BasicMed, the looser airplane certification standards also helped usher in a new era of avionics. The concept of industry consensus standards was pioneered by LSAs, and once again the industry provided good evidence to regulators that a new certification approach could lower cost without reducing safety. The steps were tentative at first, but the last five years have seen a flood of new avionics, from affordable primary flight displays to “non-certified autopilots” in certified airplanes. This is real progress for thousands of airplane owners, breathing new life into older airframes.

The future

LSA rules desperately need to be updated to allow more powerplant options.

The LSA industry isn’t dead. A recent Flying magazine edition features an ad for the Colt from Texas Aircraft, a new LSA that looks to be well made and practical. Another newish LSA is the Vashon Ranger, a $100,000 LSA designed by the founder of Dynon Avionics. I had the chance to fly one last year and enjoyed it—it’s fun and well-made, with some innovative design choices. But the Colt still costs well over $150,000, and fewer than 30 Rangers are flying. Hardly revolutionary numbers.

There is some hope for regulatory relief, which might spur a new round of airplane designs. The FAA seems serious about updating the LSA rule to potentially raise the maximum weight, increase the maximum speed, and allow electric powerplants (a critical shortcoming right now for innovative companies). These are desperately needed to prevent LSAs from being passed by traditional certified airplanes in terms of flexibility, but any such change is likely years away from being reality. By the time it comes into force, new Part 23 certification standards themselves might unlock some of the same potential as an LSA—but with fewer restrictions on performance.

In fact, the ultimate goal for industry groups and airplane manufacturers may be to eliminate the clear lines between experimental, LSA, and certified in the first place. The FAA wants to move to “performance- and risk-based divisions for airplanes.” As the airplane goes up in performance or as the type of operation goes up in risk, the requirements for aircraft and pilot certification will tighten, but without today’s arbitrary categories. At that point, LSAs might cease to be called LSAs.

No matter how you look at it, LSAs have not transformed flight training or reinvented recreational aviation. They are and probably always will be a fairly small niche. Likewise, the Sport Pilot certificate has not played much of a role in the growth of student pilots—for that we mostly have the airlines to thank. Apparently a pilot hiring boom is worth a lot more to the industry than a new certificate level.

In spite of all the disappointment, though, there is reason to celebrate. The typical GA pilot has more options for equipment and medical certification than he did ten years ago, and the Light Sport industry deserves some credit for that. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called states “laboratories of democracy” for their ability to test out new ideas at a small scale before being adopted at the federal level. Maybe that’s the legacy of LSAs: laboratories for the FAA.

The post Light Sport Aircraft aren’t selling well, but the LSA rule has still worked appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/02/light-sport-aircraft-arent-selling-well-but-the-lsa-rule-has-still-worked/

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rollinbrigittenv8 · 7 years

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Interview: Why In-Flight Entertainment Screens May Persist on Long-Haul Routes

Singapore Airlines, a Panasonic customer, is one of many carriers investing in better screens. Singapore Air soon will overhaul the TVs on its A380s. Singapore Airlines

Skift Take: Airline in-flight entertainment systems never age well. They're expensive, and they're often heavy, so airlines burn more fuel having them on board. Why do they persist? Passengers — even those who bring their own devices — tend to like them. But can airlines keep installing these systems forever?

— Brian Sumers

Editor’s note: This series, called Airline Insiders, introduces readers to behind-the-scenes decision-makers for airlines. Unlike our ongoing airline CEO series, Future of the Passenger Experience, we will not question the highest-ranking executives here. Instead, we will speak with insiders who guide decisions on airline operations, networks, marketing, and the passenger experience.

You can read all the stories in the series here.

Today, in the second installment of the series, we speak to an executive with Panasonic, one of the world’s leaders in in-flight entertainment systems for airlines.

Earlier this year, American Airlines announced something that might have been unthinkable a decade ago. It said it not only will accept new Boeing 737 Max aircraft without in-seat screens, but also signaled it will remove relatively new monitors from some short-haul planes as it updates its seating configuration.

American told employees it no longer makes sense to install screens, because they would be “obsolete within a few years.” It noted more than 90 percent of passengers travel with a tablet, phone or laptop, and with American’s new system, they can watch airline-supplied content on their own device.

American is not the only airline that prefers that approach for flights shorter than six or seven hours. In the United States, United Airlines stopped installing in-seat screens on many short-and medium-haul jets several years ago, while in Europe, Norwegian Air did not add integrated systems on the new 737 Max jets it flies from smaller East Coast cities to Western Europe. Some airlines, including Qantas, don’t have in-seat screens on some jets, but instead loan customers iPads or other tablets.

This is not the best trend for companies that make complicated in-seat systems, including industry leaders Panasonic Avionics and Thales Group. But for them, the good news is that most full-service airlines still prefer screens for wide body jets flying seven hours or more. Carriers, including American, still believe the cost — not only from installation and upkeep, but also from the extra fuel required to carry the systems — is worth it.

We spoke recently with Jon Norris, senior director of corporate sales and marketing at Panasonic Avionics. It’s Norris’ job to persuade airline representatives that passengers will demand in-seat screens in perpetuity. He said he’s bullish on the future of the industry.

We met with Norris earlier this month Singapore, where he was showcasing the airline’s new screens coming soon to its Airbus A380s.

Note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Skift: Panasonic is among the in-flight entertainment leaders, or what the industry calls IFE. How big are you?

Jon Norris: We’ve got over 9,000 aircraft equipped with our in-flight entertainment systems and just under 300 airline customers. We have 1,750 aircraft with our [broadband] connectivity, and another 2,000 on backlog so we we’re a pretty major player in the industry.

Skift: The next-generation screens you’ve designed for Singapore Airlines are pretty. But I have an iPad filled with content I like. Why do I need your screens?

Norris: It’s all about personal choice. A lot of people might be like you and they bring their own content, but there’s also a world of content out there that you’re not aware of, and you can be surprised on the aircraft. You can have a lot more personalization and a lot more tailored experience.

Skift: My iPad is great, but if an airline has an embedded screen, that means it won’t have a tablet holder. Instead, I must use the tray table, and the viewing angle stinks. I’d prefer to cast my content onto your screen. Why can’t I?

Norris: The technology is out there. Some of the challenges still to be overcome are all around cyber security. You used to be able to put your USB device in and connect and port images or music onto the screen. I think that time will come again with some of the casting technology that is out there.

But a lot of it is down to airline choice, and an airline’s discretion about what kind of content they would or would not allow passengers to share on the seatback screen. You have to be very conscious. Imagine you’re in an economy or premium economy environment. You may be wanting to share content with your screen that maybe is not suitable for people on either side of you.

Skift: Singapore Airlines brags it has a Netflix-style algorithm that can predict what passengers should watch next. How does it work?

Norris: It’s a recommendation approach. We’re looking at your browser history and what you have viewed before. We are looking at what other people on similar routes have viewed and making suggestions so you can really tailor on a dynamic basis what it is that you want to put on your playlist and watch in-flight.

One of the neat features we have introduced for Singapore Airlines is bookmark and resume. Now if you decide not to finish watching a movie, or you run out of time, you can bookmark it, synchronize it to your Krisflyer account, and the next time you board you log into the seat back and you can resume watching that content. It is queued up for you.

Skift: American said it was removing systems from some planes because they become obsolete too quickly. Is this a problem? [Note: While American is a Panasonic customer, Thales manufactured the screens slated for removal.]

Norris: One of the challenges the industry has is the rate of change of consumer electronics. If you are trying to keep pace with consumer electronics, that’s a really tough battle to win. But your screen and your IFE is judged by people’s phone or the latest tablet. So we’re getting to the point where we are very consciously looking at how we can upgrade parts of a system, like the screen, on a more regular basis, but the backbone of the system can stay as it is.

A lot more focus now is on software and applications rather than the hardware. [It’s] about what the system does rather than what it is. We are trying to go the direction of being a little bit more hardware agnostic, and update pieces of it but try provide that enticing exciting environment and experience for the passenger.

Skift: Have you ever used an eight-year old touch screen? It’s not pleasant. Not all airlines update their systems often enough. What can be done?

Norris: Yes. It’s a balance. Clearly, Apple doesn’t provide you with a new iPad every two years. Just because you bought one doesn’t mean they’re going to give you the latest and greatest. There is a need to refresh on a periodic basis, and we are trying to find the right balance in how we can do that and make that viable for the airline.

Skift: Many airlines now prefer ‘bring your own device’ entertainment, at least for shorter routes. The airline might supply the content, but you must bring the tablet, laptop or phone. Does this trend concern you?

Norris: I think what an airline wants to do for the passenger experience for its customers varies hugely. It depends on region, it depends on the length of the flight, or whether it’s a narrowbody or widebody. With widebody aircraft, we are still seeing predominantly seatback embedded systems. A lot of the airlines, particularly with narrowbodies, that are taking streaming solutions are airlines that in the past wouldn’t have selected any IFE system. In the majority of cases, embedded systems are not being taken off.

The other thing is we live in an ‘and society.’ People don’t want embedded or streaming. They want both. The trend at home is about second screens. You watch the big HD 4K TV in front of you and then you have a tablet in your lap and you do something in parallel with what you are viewing. We are seeing that trend move onto the aircraft. We see a lot of airlines ask for seatback [systems] with streaming.

We will see seatback screens disappear from seats when people take TVs out at home.

Skift: When I ask airline executives why in-flight entertainment is still necessary, executives tell me customers love early-window content — movies and TV shows available before they’re anywhere else, including Amazon or Netflix. Do passengers enjoy that stuff?

Norris: Early window content is a very big draw. I think with the alternative distributors, like Netflix and Hulu, the pressure is on the studios to look at new ways of licensing and moving away from early window to things like simultaneous release.

Skift: So you could see a movie on a plane the same day it premiers in theaters?

Norris: Potentially. Or simultaneous release across all channels, so basically theater release would coincide with when, for a premium, you could theoretically get it on other channels — be it at home, or to view on the aircraft.

Skift: What fun stuff does Panasonic plan for the future? How will in-flight entertainment evolve?

Norris: We believe we’ll be able to dynamically modify content on an aircraft in service. An individual passenger could choose at home or in the lounge what they want to watch on board, and even if it isn’t scheduled to be on the aircraft, by the time they get on board it will be there.

In the not-too-distant future, you’ll see that an airline’s fleet will have a different content set on every aircraft, which will be dynamically changing because of personal recommendations and choices of what passengers will want to see. We are going to move completely away from the, ‘here’s the one month release of content on board.’

Skift: People don’t talk much about safety. But your systems go through rigorous testing, while tablets do not. What must happen before a Panasonic system can go on an airplane?

Norris: Certification is a critical part of of our business. Safety is a prime consideration. All embedded systems go through a rigorous certification testing which does include head impact criteria testing. It is all about reducing the force, if there was an incident, that is loaded onto a person’s body.

Skift: Are your systems made from different materials than a typical tablet?

Norris: It’s very similar materials but there are specific requirements in terms of not only how the materials deform during testing but also you have to make sure even if there is a crack, there are no shards, there are no sharp edges, and the screen, even if shattered, stays in one piece. It’s a complex system of testing requirements.

Skift: In our first Airline Insiders interview, we learned passengers treat airline bedding harshly, and often steal it. Do passengers abuse your systems?

Norris: Absolutely. I wouldn’t want to call it abuse, but people can inflict significant wear and tear on IFE systems — be it from jabbing at the screen with a sharp or heavy object, or pulling jacks out. I think some of it isn’t even deliberate.

Skift: Some passengers poke hard at the touch screens, and when you’re sitting in front of a big jabber, you feel it. Can you fix this problem?

Norris: Yes. We have very sensitive touch screens so there is no need to jab. They are very responsive. The kind of response you get now is what you’re used to on a consumer device such as tablet. That phenomenon will recede as systems get upgraded.

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years