LeSving wrote:
There are several UL standards. The purpose of all of them are airworthiness. SERA works everywhere in Europe by default, no matter what you fly. This is no issue unless someone makes it an issue (which some do).
They still don’t exist in ICAO, therefore it doesn’t apply. Those existing standards would need to be unified and added to ICAO in a separate category.
gallois wrote:
If ULs came under EASA there would.be no ULM in France. EASA would require all the things that people choose to avoid by flying ULs.
The requirements would be much lighter, on the same level as UL requirements today. Otherwise it makes no sense to add a new regulation. They would only be more streamlined across country, allowing for border-crossing without issues. The problem IMO is agreeing and trusting other countries on (much) lesser standards. And probably political will.
Also, the whole regulation / certification problem is in big part a market problem (a market that’s currently way out of balance). This may be wishful thinking, but the situation could turn around quite rapidly, at least for parts availability, and new sales volume absorbing certification costs.
maxbc wrote:- “The requirements would be much lighter, on the same level as UL requirements today.”
Do you really believe that when the rules for UL are different in different countries?.Whose rules would EASA adopt?
gallois wrote:
Do you really believe that when the rules for UL are different in different countries?
I did not mean they would be lighter than they are today in country-specific regulations. I mean that they would be lighter than certified aircrafts requirements (which is basically what you described).
As for whose rule they would choose, that’s a big part of the problem. Yes it’s possible they might retain the most restrictive rule from each country, but you would still end up with something much simpler than aircrafts. It’s definitely not unthinkable (EASA has done it for aircrafts), and not necessarily the cataclysm described. I still highly doublt it WILL be done.
It’s also true that ULs fit the purpose for a vast majority of French PPL holders (as shown in the other thread, with the very low number of EPL PPL holders).
“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
Most UL pilots are happy with things the way they are.
EASA would have to move a long way to reverse the move from certified aircraft to ULs..
Having made the move myself I can’t think of anything that EASA are likely to offer that would make me revalidate my SEP A.
gallois wrote:
If ULs came under EASA there would.be no ULM in France. EASA would require all the things that people choose to avoid by flying ULs.
[lots of bad stuff]
I see no reason to expect that. Of course, anything’s possible.
Do you really believe that when the rules for UL are different in different countries?.Whose rules would EASA adopt?
I don’t see that they would be the most restrictive of the national rules. When part-NCO and the new part-M, later part-ML were written it was not. In many cases, CAAs were trying to sabotage them by pretending that their own, more restrictive, regs still applied. The German avionics requirements for IFR comes to mind. Also the attempt of the Swedish CAA to stop private-grade maintenance on non-profit club flight schools by claiming that by definition a flight school was commercial.
gallois wrote:
Most UL pilots are happy with things the way they are.
Yeah I can understand that. Most of this UL EASA stuff is very hypothetical anyway.
For me the main reason to stick to certified is range and pax capacity (I’m already quite frustrated to only take one pax at ~300nm max with decent reserves ; that’s because following club rules, which are understandable, I have to build a little time before switching to a more capable aircraft).
One problem with all this is that as soon as “IR” is mentioned, the whole deregulation pipeline blows up – because airline pilot and ATC unions go crazy over “amateurs without medicals” blah blah etc are sharing airspace with “professional pilots”.
It is unfortunately true that most of the VFR community would gladly sabotage the IFR option in order to get deregulation (a cynic might say most would do it for 1 cent off the 100LL price) but I’d like to think that most fair minded people would regard that as wrong.
maxbc wrote:
They still don’t exist in ICAO, therefore it doesn’t apply.
No aircraft exists in ICAO. It either adheres to the vague formulations there, or it don’t. If it is, this has to be verified, meaning certified. Private aircraft (in ICAO) is everything with an MTOW less than 5700 kg, and it doesn’t matter what it is used for. In ICAO an open cockpit single seat UL is the same as a twin jet biz-jet. If the same thing was done for boats, there would be no international travel with private vessels for sure, except Oligarch size yachts. For boats, a vessel carrying (paying) passengers, is a different concept altogether than a private vessel. The point is that ICAO is irrelevant and useless for aircraft that are exclusively used for private transportation and recreation. What you end up with is something like a Cirrus, an aircraft that cost less than €100k to produce (technically), but is sold for 1M.
ICAO is that dream of yours with a set of least common denominator “rules”. Even EASA with their LSA, VLA and LAPL don’t regard ICAO as relevant for private transportation and recreation. Why ICAO is what it is with respect to private aircraft and licenses today in 2024, can only be explained by old geezers lobbying to protect their “hard earned” privileges. The practical result is to avoid ICAO altogether, because private aircraft shouldn’t be mentioned there in the first place. This is also what is happening more and more.
What we end up with is national regulations. These are different from place to place. But looking at it, these differences are all insignificant technicalities. Some authorities see it as it is, others cannot see the forest for all the trees. It’s something we have to live with I guess, but as gallois points out, it can all be solved with an e-mail.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Today, most ULs are airplanes like others too, only that they stick the label on to avoid the dread of regulation. And regulators are sitting there some place and wonder how it happened that they missed the bus on the whole thing and I guess you are right to say that they simply wash their hands of it.
They should wake up and see the positives and transfer them to CS-23. Make a new CS or change CS-23, I don’t care. But it makes no freaking sense that we have these “ULs”, nice, modern proper airplanes, just lighter and just able to carry max two regular sized people for relatively affordable prices taking off and becoming ever more popular while the rest of us are stuck on the 70s, 80s and if we’re lucky 90s technology, because regulation makes it prohibitively expansive and complicated to go more modern or to even develop anything modern.
This and the cost of CS-23 OPS is what is killing GA in Europe. And nothing else.
It just boggles the mind.
hazek wrote:
This and the cost of CS-23 OPS is what is killing GA in Europe
I don’t agree that GA in Europe is killed. It’s very much alive. Historically certified GA was killed in the late 70s, early 80s and has never recovered. It’s all explained here.
At the time, industry analysts estimated that the U.S. decline in general aviation aircraft manufacturing eliminated somewhere between 28,000 and 100,000 jobs as unit production dropped by 95% between the 1970s peak and the early 1990s sharply different from other segments of the global aerospace industry, where U.S. market share was still strong.
As to why, I’m sure this was discussed to death during the 80s. Several factors apparently. The sum of it all was too much, and the bubble burst. Bubbles burst all the time, but the interesting part is this one never recovered. There’s no sign it ever will recover. I mean, this is more than 40 years ago, almost half a century, and nothing has changed for the better, it has only become worse.
Other things have happened though. The kit market in the US and the UL market in Europe. This is GA today, plus keeping 40-60 year old planes flying. If we like it or not is a personal thing, but the reality is what it is. The 60s and 70s must have been a blast GA vise for sure, but those days are gone, it inflated to nothing in practical terms, two generations ago when the entire industry collapsed. It’s long gone history. I decided 20 years ago that I’m not going to live in the past, when I started with ULs. I still keep my PPL, because I need it for acro and to fly experimental homebuilt aircraft.
Right now, the same tendency can be seen in the UL market. Escalating bureaucracy, escalating prices, and mostly for the weird incentive of becoming more “serious”. If you want “serious”, then show it for real, get an ATPL and start flying with an airline. The French have understood a thing or two, that’s obvious. But I still don’t think neither the kit market or the UL market will collapse the way the GA industry did. Where the certified GA industry could escape by starting focusing on the much more lucrative high dollar business market, there’s no such escape route for ULs and kits. There will always be some enthusiast manufacturers that are able to make a small business out of selling simple and affordable aircraft and/or kits.
