Why Light Sport Airplanes Suffer So Many Crashes

[Music] if you're a regular viewer of the abbé web channel you're probably a pilot at least we hope you are and if you've flown much at all you will have thought about that thing which we all wish to avoid crashing now no same pilot plans to crash an airplane so it's safe to say that all crashes are a surprise usually crashes happen because a chain of small oversights or mistakes add up to a situation that eventually overwhelms the pilot in the aviation press we write about this stuff all the time under the high-minded assumption that learning about the other guy's screw up will help you avoid making the same mistake yourself well that's true it's also a little like gawking a pileup on the freeway otherwise there wouldn't be an entire YouTube channel devoted to Russian dashcam footage of car crashes admit it you can't not click on this stuff but back to the high road in this video I want to look at the accident pattern for these guys light sport airplanes now when these aircraft were being proposed 15 years ago lots of people said they'd have a terrible accident record because they're so light and pilots could fly them without requiring a lot of training but is that true time to find out first the numbers they weren't very big light sport airplanes were supposed to be cheap they aren't so they would sell a lot they don't to put things in perspective if all the piston airplanes in the US fleet were represented by this basketball the light sports share would be by comparison not a soccer ball not a baseball nor golf ball not even a cat's eye marble but a blueberry and a pretty small one at that so if you were paying attention in college statistics class you'll remember that making big inclusions about small numbers is fraught with problems but we have to work with what we've got and it's fair to make some general observations from the data we do have now we didn't study every single light sport model out there because well I limited attention span you know so much dashcam foot so little time so we contain this to the top ten selling light-sport models in the US and here they are a caveat here this data comes from the FAA u.s. registry and it lags a little bit so the model totals are just a little bit low there's something interesting the best-selling brand isn't the cheapest it's the most expensive or nearly so that would be the cub crafters line the cheapest models the arrow pro and the Pipistrel happened to be the lowest sellers it kind of tanks the idea that cheap light sports would sell better because they are cheap now time for math class specifically division accident rates are calculated by dividing the number of accidents by what's called the exposure basis or exposure units in aviation that's usually blocks of 100 thousand hours of flight time so if an airplane type accumulated say five hundred thousand hours and had eight accidents it has an accident rate of 1.6% ik but the real world turns out to be a lot messier than that for general aviation as a whole the overall accident rate is about six per hundred thousand and the fatal rate is just under one the good news is that that's the lowest it has been in years but for light-sport airplanes it's not quite so pretty an FAA study done the personal light-sport flying found that the overall accident rate for light-sport airplanes was wait for it a whopping twenty nine point eight and the fatal rate was five that's five times the general aviation average can that be right well yeah maybe I might quarrel with the actual number but my own review of these ten models shows a similar pattern here's the results and just for comparison I threw in the Cessna 172 all but one of the light-sport airplanes have a higher accident rate than the Cessna 172 and the bottom five are between at least three and five times higher the fatal accident rate for light-sport airplanes is similarly higher now another caveat obtaining accurate fleet hours is impossible so I used average hours estimated by the general aviation manufacturers Association for light sport airplanes that's hardly ideal but it's the best available so what's going on here our light sport airplanes less safe where are the pilots flying them less skilled it could be a little bit of each almost half of all accidents were landing or takeoff accidents losing it on the runway in a crosswind hard landings overshoots undershoots you name it that's higher than we see for standard category airplanes and for general aviation overall things like VFR and IMC and control flight and terrain are lesser factors in life sports and that makes sense because they're flown in day VFR conditions judging pilots skill well that's a little more difficult for this group of accidents the average total pilot time was almost 2,500 hours that ain't no neophyte and a lot of these guys are ATP or commercial pilots not recently trained sport pilots so they're quite a few ER students some are older pilots getting back into aviation because they no longer need a medical to fly an LSA only a small number appear to be actual sport pilots the light sports skeptics warn that the low wing loading and light control forces would be a factor in accidents it looks like they may be right a Cessna 172 has a wing loading of 14 pounds per square foot a 182 is 18 pounds light sport airplanes typically 10 pounds sometimes a little less what that means is that light sport airplanes are kites and turbulence so they get bounced around easily couple that with light control forces and they're a handful on even marginally windy days and then the 200-plus accident reports I research for this video that comes up over and over again pilots get into a jam over the runway then they make it worse by over controlling because the control forces are so light this single factor may go a long way toward explaining why the light sport accident rate appears to be higher so what's the takeaway here is there a takeaway back to basketballs and blueberries I'm gonna predict that as a light-sport fleet expands and we gain more experience with these airplanes the accident rate will slowly improve bigger numbers better results it's gonna be a slow slog though like years let me go back to the accident race again and look at an airplane with one of the lowest accident rates compared to one with a much higher rate again cub crafters sells the most light sports in the US but it has a low accident rate flight design sells the second most but it has a higher rate now logically because the cub crafter is a tail dragger you'd expect it to have a higher rate because tail draggers are notorious ditch lovers the flight design on the other hand is one of the best-handling lsas out there and it's tricycle gear so let's worry about ground loops but if the flight design line has a quirk its speed land it too fast and try to force it on and it can get impolite there's one other point both companies offer training but cub crafters offers a week-long training course first airplanes and the company says two-thirds of owners complete that course one week some jet courses are shorter than that other companies offer training too but none are quite that extensive as the airlines in the military have learned that training stuff really works otherwise the main takeaway is to learn to land the damn airplane because that's where half the risk of accidents are the focus should be on speed control all the way to touchdown and stop too much speed is usually worse than too little after that if you keep from running out of gas and running into weather you'll be just fine you can find a full analysis of light-sport accidents in the August 2018 issue of aviation consumer magazine that aviation consumer calm yeah you got to subscribe but we got to pay for this stuff somehow and while you're tapping your credit card info in please excuse me I've got a bunch of gas footage to review i'm poverty' rally thanks for watching try not to drive like that [Music]

Channel: AVweb

Views: 1,463,626

Rating: 4.884037 out of 5

Keywords: Avweb, light sport aircraft, flight training, CubCrafters, Flight Design, Skycatcher, Sport Cruiser

Id: iv_rRus-X9k

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/bwooceli]

Shout out to Paul for being the best of the non-vloggy YouTube aero content guys.

As for the question at hand, I've never flown lsa, but the thing that sticks out to me from this was the # of high time pilots flying (and apparently crashing) them. Coupled with the incidents being mostly runway related (takeoff and landing), have to believe that pilots think they can make up for the planes deficiencies. An ATP would be more prone to think they can overcome a 15kt crosswind in an lsa. No big deal, right?

[u/Zeus1325]

Can we take a minute to appreciate the wonderful job they did of blurring the tail number at 0:31

[u/Who_GNU]

As someone that earned a PPL in a Cessna 152, then switched to a Evektor SportStar, I've got to say they aren't kidding about the need for light control forces. Couple that with a direct linked nose gear, and you have an airplane that wants to go down the runway in every direction except straight ahead.

Even as light as a 152 is, the SportStar is still noticeably more difficult to control while taking off, landing, and taxiing. It's a fun and easy airplane for cruising and performing maneuvers, but it is a bit squirrely on or near the ground.

I'm not surprised that LSA license holders make up a relatively small portion of the incident pilots, because when learning on an airplane like that you have to be prepared, but when transitioning to one, you aren't expecting gusty winds to be suddenly more difficult to deal with.

[u/Av8torryan]

This is why I think the FAA shit the bed with light sport. They tried to sell new airplanes which failed. They should have said any 2 seater under 200hp qualifies and get rid of the weight requirements so you don’t have these “kites”

[u/intern_steve]

I think it's interesting that wing loading and the resulting controllability is taking the heat for all or these accidents. I don't disagree with the findings, but I am very curious as to why that feature should recur so frequently in the market segment when that segment is aimed at pilots with lower experience levels. I can only assume that a more highly loaded wing would make it difficult to achieve the desired stalling characteristics of LSAs? The accident rate among high time pilots with many certificates is in no way surprising to me. In my admittedly somewhat limited experience with high time pilots, a lot of these people have completely forgotten what it's like flying a small plane, if that's even where they started. That's not to suggest that it's easier or harder than flying the jet, but rather that it's an almost unrelated skillset other than that both aircraft have a stick and a rudder. Unrelated: pilots need to he taking advantage of the Jabiru and the Pipistrel more. Both are designed to handle way more weight than LSA allows for in the US, so they are real performers under US certification restrictions. Also they fall on the higher end of the LSA wing loading scale. At around 12lb/ft² for the Alpha trainer and the Virus SW with 600kg MTOW.

[u/Peddyslate]

I'm under LSA training at the moment, and this bugs me. Not to the point where it's putting me off, but to where I realise I have to stay humble and practice - especially takeoffs and landings

[u/complexgeek]

I'm currently training in an LSA and while I enjoy flying it, I've found that a lot of the advice regarding flying heavier aircraft needs to be applied differently.

Also I'm really struggling with speed control & flare at landing, but I've had several people tell me once I can land a Jabiru that a Warrior or other heavier GA aircraft will be much easier.

[u/livinthedreamz]

A lot of the problems with the LSA planes are "arguably" down to the slow stall speed.

I flew an RV12 quite a bit (it's a fun plane) and one day I was at C83 and departing with a 25 knot head wind on 23. It seem'd like I'd just aligned on the center-line and the plane was trying to lift off.

Just kept it low until speed was sufficient that it could fly without the head wind and it was fine. Looking back I could imagine a student trying to rotate with a 20 knot ground speed and the wind dies and the plane drops..

The minimum weight is not the answer. Maybe a higher weight would help with the dynamic stability. Then again they don't generally have a lot of hp and they don't climb for shit when it's hot and fully loaded.

The Carbon Cub's are skating the LSA limit with a self imposed "120" knot speed as with a 180 hp motor they cruise at 140 knots and your supposed to be smart enough not to let that out and self regulate..

The price point Paul makes is real however. The LSA's are expensive! The CC will run you in the 300's. A Black Wing will run you 250k, the Risen will cost in the 300K, the Pipistrel will be in the 200's, and so forth. Point is for this $ one can buy an A36, a 210 or even a 182T so they have really priced themselves out of touch.

The Arion Lightning claim a flying plane for under 100K new. This seems like a deal for a new plane.

[u/samw51]

Haven’t seen this posted yet...

What do you think about LSA’s safety record? I liked his point at the end about aircraft-specific training possibly making a significant difference.