The SmartPlane™ Concept

As Pilots and Engineers, we have been probably the most frustrated to watch the ongoing stream of look-alike LSA aircraft being introduced to the market place and touted as a new era in aviation. The reality behind it all is much different than the marketing hype and the purposeful misrepresentation of these aircraft by their manufacturers. Worse than that has been the drooling puppy-dog approach of aviation industry journalists to write glowing reports about these aircraft and to ratify their claim of a renaissance in small aircraft. This is all about advertiser "smoozing" than real facts and honest product evaluation or review. If you advertise with them, or you give them free test flights in your plane you get a great article written about your airplane.

Let's take a real look at what is going on with the whole LSA thing anyway:

1. There is a flood of aircraft being introduced in the USA from Europe, 95% of these planes were built by small companies operating out of garage-type facilities making aircraft that meet the European ultralight limits of 450 kg MTOW, which is 992 pounds for those of you who have not converted to the metric system yet. These planes are invariable all copycats of each other, using the same basic parts suppliers and the same contract design engineers who mix and match parts from other planes to make "new" planes. Yes, that is the fact. Write us and we will give you the specifics of manufacturers and suppliers so you can see for yourself. What is really interesting is the pedigree of most of these airplanes, many of them were "designed" and "built" via the pathway of purchasing an existing kit plane and then "adjusting" it so they can call it their own. Once again, write us and we will give you some specific examples and facts. Yet on all the websites of these manufacturers they claim to be original aircraft designers. All you have to do is look at certain planes that are well-known industry classics such as Glasair, Lancair, Kitfox as examples and then look at their European LSA "clones" to get the picture. One of the most glaring examples is a certain manufacturer who claims to have engineered a new amphibian, and a simple Google image search of the Osprey plane of two decades ago compared with this "new amphibian" reveals an EXACT replication, just a change of material from fiberglass to aluminum. This is the true fact of all this LSA "engineering design work" by these firms. The truth hurts, as usual, but it is the truth and the facts.

2. When the LSA rule came about, most of these manufacturers suddenly changed their brochures and printed specifications that their aircraft were amazingly overnight 600kg MTOW takeoff compliant sensations. Many went ahead and shipped existing aircraft to the USA to eager new dealers without so much as changing one thing to really comply, that means the aircraft were not re-engineered for the stall speed requirements or gross weight increases, they just suddenly became what we call "instant LSA" aircraft. Then, gradually they began to change parts on their planes to try and beef them up to meet the LSA requirements, some have changed their wings finally, and added bubble canopies to camouflage the same airplane or glued on some winglets to change the appearance from the Euro ULM version. This seems to have fooled an initial round of LSA dealers and customers, who seem to be one and the same so far.... there are more LSA planes under registration of dealers than customers in the USA, so that should tell you something also.

3. As far as "design engineering" is concerned...most of these manufacturers contract their design work out to one of the primary 2 or 3 design "firms" in Europe to do their calculations and design consulting, and these consist of small 2- 3 person offices that have been involved in just about everyone one of these aircraft. No wonder they all look alike, and no wonder they share the same parts such as landing gear, and wheel pants and canopies, and wing profiles, etc. One of the more comical, but sadly, lethal aspects of this has been the quick application of "ballistic parachute option" to these aircraft, in another "me too" hasty approach to marketing. Let's think for one minute, the opening shock of the canopy of the ballistic parachute upon actuation of the chute after its rocket deployment is a 5-G shock, yet most all of these planes have maximum 4-G airframes, so it is pretty clear the aircraft will be torn apart in the sky and there will be no life saving function. None of these planes have done their parachute engineering like Cirrus did, and the ballistic parachute manufacturers can verify this for you. Why? Because it takes lots and lots of engineering hours and expensive CAD/FEA stations and software and experienced people. Just like designing a real airplane does.

4. An airplane designed for 450 kg takeoff weight and flight is not the same as an aircraft designed for 600 kg, no matter what anybody wants to tell you, it is basic aeronautical and structural engineering. An FEA stress analysis of the effect of this on these aircraft airframes is quite revealing, yet even more revealing is the number of these manufacturers who have not done that analysis, yet have offered their ULM planes as LSA compliant designs.

5. Moving on, let's talk a bit about what the LSA plane was really supposed to be, as it has now suddenly become a $125,000 aircraft that you can basically only fly outside of major airspace and in good weather.

The LSA plane was supposed to be a new low-cost aircraft that would bring more people into flying than previously could afford it and to bring older pilots back into flying who had lost their FAA medicals due to the normal process of aging, permitting them to fly in conditions and places where it was safe and uncongested from commercial traffic. It was basically going to make factory-built kit planes legal to sell. All of the relevant accident data had shown that there was no statistically significant variance in accidents of home built planes vs factory built planes, this was simply to make it more convenient to those who did not want to spend years building a kit plane.
From this the aviation media spun their normal stories predicting thousands of these planes taking to the skies and a new epoch of affordable light plane flying. The effect has actually been the opposite, there have been few sales, a myriad of suddenly LSA-compliant aircraft being promoted, and prices steadily rising to well over $100,000 per plane now. Some of this has to do with the tripling of composite material costs the past few years because of the worldwide shortage of carbon fiber materials, but in actuality it is the pure reflection of manufacturers buying from the same group of parts suppliers and having to face the bank debt and overheads of building aircraft, it is a costly business for sure. The reality is what the reality is, no matter the journalist hype and fantasy market predictions. Meanwhile, these planes have racked up an amazing number of crashes, you can search this yourself on accident databases, or you can write us and we can tell you about all of them, and the pictures are not pretty... how these planes breakup upon crashing tells volumes about their engineering and construction.

6. Let's face it, flying is kind of dangerous, and risk minimization is what all the pilot training and engineering efforts are directed towards as we try to make flying more safe. Risk adversity is more prevalent in our culture these days and the emphasis on safety is all around us in today's world, the car industry is one of the most shining examples. LSA planes are going to be flown by people who fly for fun, and who are not the best trained or proficient pilots in the world, and do not have the time or desire to study, study, study before they fly, so they MUST be the SAFEST DESIGNS in the world as they are not flown by professionals. Instead, the LSA market has been flooded with these poorly-designed and ill-conceived "Ultralights on Steroids" modifications. So, the need for a clean-sheet approach to the safest and most affordable LSA plane is clear. What does it take to do this? Pure and simple.... lots and lots of engineering design work, testing, stress and load analysis, experience in manufacturing, and an understanding of the target market, and best of all, have it conceived and managed by experienced pilots, mechanics and engineers with the proper resources and facilities to achieve the mission.