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Personal aviation is about to get interesting (2023)


FAA is getting one enormously consequential thing right

In 1996, in order to address perceived conflicts of interest after a handful of airliner crashes, Congress removed the agency’s authorization to promote the development of civil aviation, saying that safety was the highest priority. By making a category of aircraft that doesn’t require type certification, is actually useful for transportation (250 knots and 4 seats), and can be flown with less skill via simplified flight controls, FAA is opening the door to a bigger market and vastly more innovation. Aviation manufacturing entails more burdensome supply chain integrity requirements than other industries, so LSAs will likely never get as cheap as a Toyota Camry despite having similar mass, but it could be a smaller multiple of the cost.

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Personal aviation