{"id":3861,"date":"2018-08-29T10:30:31","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T00:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/?p=3861"},"modified":"2018-08-29T10:30:31","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T00:30:31","slug":"why-lsas-crash-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/?p=3861","title":{"rendered":"Why LSAs crash so much"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have long held a view that Light Sport Aircraft (LSAs) are not, as many people seem to think, just less expensive ‘mini’ GA aircraft.<\/p>\n

For a start, they are built to much tighter weight tolerances than typical GA aircraft and thus need careful maintenance to ensure that they remain airworthy. Don’t get me wrong – a correctly maintained LSA can have a life span of many many years – but alas, in Australia, quite a few LSAs are quite legally owner-maintained by people who do not really have the skills, experience or knowledge to do so….but that’s another rant.<\/p>\n

More importantly, LSAs have quite different flight handling characteristics from typical GA aircraft. This starts with taxiing, where dyed-in-the-wool GA jocks often describe them as ‘squirrely’, through to take-off performance: what typical school GA trainer will take off in 4-5 seconds after applying power, as many LSAs will? In the cruise, the light wing loading of most LSAs (remember, the regulation requires a stall speed limit of 42 knots ‘clean’) is more susceptible to turbulence – although the great upside of most LSAs is that they are a lot more responsive (to some, ‘fun’) on the controls.<\/p>\n

This responsiveness, however, can potentially cause problems when it comes to the approach and landing phase of flight. For a start, approach and landing speeds of most LSAs are around 50 knots or even slower, a speed which feels dangerous to many GA pilots. Come in faster and you’ll likely over-control, and\/or float or balloon the aircraft<\/a>, with potentially disastrous consequences.<\/p>\n

To further expand our thinking, Paul Bertorelli of AVweb<\/a> has made a great little video on the subject of accidents in LSAs, which you can view by clicking on the picture above or here: Why Light Sport Airplanes suffer so many crashes<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of Paul’s statistics refer to the USA market but all of his comments apply to LSAs the world over. Enjoy the video!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have long held a view that Light Sport Aircraft (LSAs) are not, as many people seem to think, just less expensive ‘mini’ GA aircraft. For a start, they are built to much tighter weight tolerances than typical GA aircraft … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[181,188,600,619,660,740],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}