MOSAIC Status

hindsight2020 said:
I've said it for a decade now, it's always been the OEMs behind the scenes putting their thumb on the scale. They don't want anything to stir up support for the economic life extension of their legacy offerings on the market.

People need to get it through their skulls: OEMs want their legacy non-revenue 20th century piston offerings gone. They want them gone.
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This is probably true, but it represents very short-sighted thinking.

In order to sell new aircraft, there have to be pilots who want to buy. Without legacy aircraft that are [relatively] affordable for training and entry into the sport, there will be far less total market for the OEMs' products.

If PPL lessons require a $450/hr Cirrus SR20 because everything else is gone, how many people will become pilots?
 
hindsight2020 said:
That letting any measure of "desirable" legacy spam can performance category (you know, the usual "BE35 and below" macro-class of piston airframes) into the LSA fold will be the death of thousands of children, and that it's pretty unsafe and the FAA should pause and never let that happen. Same reason the primary non-commercial category got snuffed in 2013/2015. I've said it for a decade now, it's always been the OEMs behind the scenes putting their thumb on the scale. They don't want anything to stir up support for the economic life extension of their legacy offerings on the market.

People need to get it through their skulls: OEMs want their legacy non-revenue 20th century piston offerings gone. They want them gone. GAMA, being their resident bootlicker/mouthpiece, is part of that controlled opposition campaign. Meanwhile the perennial ingénues on here keep clicking their heels waiting for MOSAIC Godot to bring them regulatory relief that was never forthcoming. It'd be comical if it weren't so sad to witness.
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What did you say?
 
StraightnLevel said:
…
In order to sell new aircraft, there have to be pilots who want to buy.…
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Nope, there have to be businesses with an operating model that can bulk purchase and operate a fleet. As those fleets depreciate out of profitability, they may then trickle into the secondary markets.

StraightnLevel said:
…
If PPL lessons require a $450/hr Cirrus SR20 because everything else is gone, how many people will become pilots?
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Kind of the wrong question to ask; the question to ask is how many pilots are needed at the top of the funnel to feed the bottom of the funnel (airlines). Recreational flying has never been an economically affordable proposition if you’re paying for your own training.

X3 Skier said:
What did you say?
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Effectively GAMA isn’t supportive and Textron and Piper have no incentive or desire to do anything more than support the legacy fleet until those fleets go extinct. Believing otherwise is wishful thinking.
 
X3 Skier said:
What did they say?
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You can read all 38 pages by downloading this:


I found the GAMA comments mostly supportive. WRT the "legacy fleet", GAMA proposes a Vs increase to 58 KCAS and they even mention a Piper Archer. However, buried in the doc regarding safety:

GAMA member companies have provided inputs on various mitigations that could be
considered by FAA but there is not consensus. These include whether:
- the LSA expansion proposals and the additional manufacturer requirements proposed
in part 22 together contain an acceptable level of mitigations commensurate with the
increased level of risk;
- to restore or change any of the proposed removal of limits;
- to introduce new mitigations;
- to limit the risk exposure to fewer persons consistent with the safety continuum (i.e.
retain the current 2-person limit for LSA); or
- to better balance the risks in one area with mitigations in another area.

So it's probably fair to say that some of the GAMA members don't want to see more of the legacy fleet opened up to Sport Pilots...
 
idahoflier said:
You can read all 38 pages by downloading this:


I found the GAMA comments mostly supportive. WRT the "legacy fleet", GAMA proposes a Vs increase to 58 KCAS and they even mention a Piper Archer. However, buried in the doc regarding safety:

GAMA member companies have provided inputs on various mitigations that could be
considered by FAA but there is not consensus. These include whether:
- the LSA expansion proposals and the additional manufacturer requirements proposed
in part 22 together contain an acceptable level of mitigations commensurate with the
increased level of risk;
- to restore or change any of the proposed removal of limits;
- to introduce new mitigations;
- to limit the risk exposure to fewer persons consistent with the safety continuum (i.e.
retain the current 2-person limit for LSA); or
- to better balance the risks in one area with mitigations in another area.

So it's probably fair to say that some of the GAMA members don't want to see more of the legacy fleet opened up to Sport Pilots...
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Thanks. Always like to have the actual letter than an opinion of the letter. I agre with your assessment and think GAMA is pretty supportive of the Changes.
 
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Last fall, I took a look at occupancy in accidents involving reciprocating-engine Cessnas with four or more seats. The blue bar shows the percentage of the time accidents occurred with the occupancy of the aircraft. The red bar shows how often the fatalities occurred at that occupancy (any fatalities, not fatalities of everyone). Data is from 2008 to 2021.
1706648831951.png

You can see that even with "four seat" Cessnas, when fatal accidents happened, there were only two people on board ~75% of the time.

Ron Wanttaja
 
TCABM said:
Nope, there have to be businesses with an operating model that can bulk purchase and operate a fleet. As those fleets depreciate out of profitability, they may then trickle into the secondary markets.


Kind of the wrong question to ask; the question to ask is how many pilots are needed at the top of the funnel to feed the bottom of the funnel (airlines). Recreational flying has never been an economically affordable proposition if you’re paying for your own training.



Effectively GAMA isn’t supportive and Textron and Piper have no incentive or desire to do anything more than support the legacy fleet until those fleets go extinct. Believing otherwise is wishful thinking.
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QFT cuz I can't like it twice.
 
wanttaja said:
Considering that about a quarter of the accidents involving five or more people, everyone was wearing a parachute.....

Ron Wanttaja
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So are the other 75% of the accidents college pranks gone wrong?
 
TCABM said:
Kind of the wrong question to ask; the question to ask is how many pilots are needed at the top of the funnel to feed the bottom of the funnel (airlines). Recreational flying has never been an economically affordable proposition if you’re paying for your own training.
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I'm 100% convinced that the current "pilot shortage" drumbeat is a pyramid scheme to get the current crop of puppy mill CFIs enough hours to be FOs in a year or so.

Getting back to MOSAIC, while I understand that a lot of our older pilots really want to expand their access to the older fleet, the real benefit IMO for the MOSAIC possibilities is in the "aerial work" realm. Allowing light aircraft to be built that might be useful for things like aerial photography, survey, and flight training would be huge. I'm flying a 50 year old Cardinal on photo missions that we should be able to fly in newer, more efficient, cheaper to operate and maintain aircraft, and allowing people like us to buy new planes and release older planes back into the market and have better maintenance support and efficiency in the process would be huge.

A Pipistrel over in France being used by a fellow aerial photographer has been blazing quite a trail and it would be great to open up these options here stateside.

www.aopa.org

The Green Observer

A French aerial photography company reduced the firm’s carbon footprint while raising environmental awareness.
www.aopa.org
 
I don’t think anyone should count any chickens until they are hatched. This is just public comment - and they can essentially adopt what they want in whatever form. There might be some congressional push back - but I wouldn’t get my hopes up until it’s much further along past the comment period.
 
idahoflier said:
Will be interesting. I guess there are a few protections for insurers with BasicMed. That said, I have yet to see a policy that has the word "BasicMed" in it.

I have been trying to figure out why my RV-12 policy is more expensive (for less coverage) than my C172 policy and based on your comment I thought maybe because the RV-12 is a LSA and may be piloted without a Medical Cert or BasicMed. My policy says:

"The pilot flying the aircraft must maintain a valid pilot certificate (including the appropriate
ratings) and valid medical certificate as required by the Federal Aviation Administration or
its approved equivalent."

So is a Driver's License an "approved equivalent" exercising Sport Pilot privileges?
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This keeps coming up, and SEVERAL articles have debunked it. One insurance company wrote BasicMed into their policy wording as follows -

The term Medical Certificate is defined as any valid First-Class, Second-Class, Third-Class, or BasicMed compliance.
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They use the language "Medical Certificate", but define "Medical Certificate" as any medical document suitable to the flight as covered in the Federal Aviation Regulations.
The language doesn't have to be the exact words you're looking for so long as their is a document which defines the meaning, and the exact wording you're looking for falls under that definition.
 
This keeps coming up, and SEVERAL articles have debunked it. One insurance company wrote BasicMed into their policy wording as follows -
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What has been debunked? Would you be able to provide a link to one of the articles you're referencing?

They use the language "Medical Certificate", but define "Medical Certificate" as any medical document suitable to the flight as covered in the Federal Aviation Regulations.
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The language doesn't have to be the exact words you're looking for so long as their is a document which defines the meaning, and the exact wording you're looking for falls under that definition.
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My policies have no such definitions in them and they don't reference other term or glossary documents. In other words, the policies don't define what a Medical Certificate is, and in fact the words "Medical Certificate" appear once in each policy as I previously mentioned.
 
Clearly, it's necessary to read the actual policy language, and ask the insurance provider if it's unclear.
 
idahoflier said:
What has been debunked? Would you be able to provide a link to one of the articles you're referencing?
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idahoflier said:
My policies have no such definitions in them and they don't reference other term or glossary documents. In other words, the policies don't define what a Medical Certificate is, and in fact the words "Medical Certificate" appear once in each policy as I previously mentioned.
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The policies define what the insurance company will accept as meeting the requirements of "holding a medical certificate appropriate for the aircraft being flown".
 
Jon Wilder said:
The policies define what the insurance company will accept as meeting the requirements of "holding a medical certificate appropriate for the aircraft being flown".
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I appreciate the reply and I have seen those articles or articles like them over the years. The problem is there is a difference between a broker's opinion and what's actually written in a policy. If I had language in my policies like the example in the last article that actually include "BasicMed" I wouldn't be concerned. It would be easy for the insurance company issuing my policy to include BasicMed. They don't. They have "Medical Certificate or it's equivalent". BasicMed isn't a medical certificate and it's not equivalent to a medical certificate, it's "an alternate way for pilots to fly without holding an FAA medical certificate as long as they meet certain requirements".

I tried calling the insurance company underwriting my policies to discuss further and they wouldn't speak with me, and referred me to my broker. My broker assures me that I'm covered with BasicMed and I have this assurance in the form of an email. Hopefully I and anyone else who has the same policy never has to find out if they really are covered under BasicMed...
 
idahoflier said:
I appreciate the reply and I have seen those articles or articles like them over the years. The problem is there is a difference between a broker's opinion and what's actually written in a policy. If I had language in my policies like the example in the last article that actually include "BasicMed" I wouldn't be concerned. It would be easy for the insurance company issuing my policy to include BasicMed. They don't. They have "Medical Certificate or it's equivalent". BasicMed isn't a medical certificate and it's not equivalent to a medical certificate, it's "an alternate way for pilots to fly without holding an FAA medical certificate as long as they meet certain requirements".

I tried calling the insurance company underwriting my policies to discuss further and they wouldn't speak with me, and referred me to my broker. My broker assures me that I'm covered with BasicMed and I have this assurance in the form of an email. Hopefully I and anyone else who has the same policy never has to find out if they really are covered under BasicMed...
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So what would you consider to be “the equivalent”?
 
If basicmed makes you legal to pilot an aircraft on any particular flight, then it's "equivalent".

Unless you had an accident caused by a medical condition that would have been grounds for a class 3 denial but was acceptable under basicmed, they would have a hard time denying the claim.
 
Maybe a letter to the insurance company's legal department asking if they consider basicmed equivalent or have they been committing insurance fraud these many years? :devil:
 
Dana said:
If basicmed makes you legal to pilot an aircraft on any particular flight, then it's "equivalent".

Unless you had an accident caused by a medical condition that would have been grounds for a class 3 denial but was acceptable under basicmed, they would have a hard time denying the claim.
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^^^THIS!!! They would have to prove that whatever condition you had that made you BasicMed eligible, but 3rd class ineligible, was the cause of the incident, in order to deny the claim. That would be impossible in something like a loss of engine power scenario, or a pilot deviation scenario where the other pilot is at fault. It can't be "Well we realize the other pilot failed to comply with an ATC instruction and the incident resulted from that, but you had BasicMed so...".
 
"It may not get better, but it does get over."
-David Drake

Ron Wanttaja
 
MauleSkinner said:
ok, what could possibly exist that the underwriter would consider to be “the equivalent”?
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IDK? But one scenario I see is what happens if the FAA changes "Medical Certificate" to "Aeromedical Credential"? It's the same thing with a new name, thus an "equivalent". But again, it doesn't matter what I think it only matters what the insurance company thinks and/or how they will argue it when it comes to litigation.
 
Dana said:
If basicmed makes you legal to pilot an aircraft on any particular flight, then it's "equivalent".

Unless you had an accident caused by a medical condition that would have been grounds for a class 3 denial but was acceptable under basicmed, they would have a hard time denying the claim.
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OK, so in your mind there is a loophole. So let's go with that scenario. I would prefer to be covered in that scenario at it would be nice if my policy didn't have a loophole like that...
 
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