When the light sport aircraft rule was busy being born a decade ago, it was intended to be a poster child for inspired innovation driven by reduced regulation. While there’s no argument that LSA has ignited a bushel of new designs, not much has been said about safety and crashworthiness. Is it reasonable to assume that a 1320-pound airplane will be as safe as one weighing 300 or 500 pounds more?
In our view, the proof is in the flying and in the accident record. The U.S. LSA fleet now has some seven years of operational history, which we think is sufficient to warrant a first look. For this report, we examined the accident histories of the top 10 selling LSA manufacturers in the U.S. Our initial findings reveal that for this fleet, the fatal accident rate is comparable to GA in general, but the overall accident rate is substantially higher because LSAs suffer many more landing accidents than do larger and heavier aircraft.