LSA Buyers: Dumping the Cirrus and the Baron

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I hauled the Cub over to Sebring on Saturday—that takes most of the day, one way—and hung out at Tecnam’s big hangar there. I’d flown over to fly and shoot Tecnam’s latest light sport aircraft, the Astore. Nice airplane.

I first saw it at Aero in 2013 and didn’t spend enough time with it to get the gist of what Tecnam had in mind for it. It’s basically a high-end, high-performance cruising LSA and by high-end, I mean invoicing around $200,000, on a base price of about $170,000. Because of the high price—not despite it—it has become a bestseller for Tecnam. You read that right; the top-tier price is a plus because that’s what buyers of LSAs are buying. I’ve said this to the point of inducing nausea, but it continues to be true. And has been true almost from day one.

Now another trend has surfaced that I don’t think anyone expected. Many of the buyers, although not all, of these airplanes are not newcomers to aviation or older pilots who are stepping out of ancient Skyhawks or Cherokees as they transition into their aeronautical dotage. Increasingly, they are owners of new aircraft like the Cirrus SR series, twins like Barons or even cabin-class 340s or 421s. Tecnam’s Shannon Yeager told me these are not pilots who are aging out or worried about losing their medicals, or who can no longer afford those airplanes. They’re opting out on a value equation basis.

I can’t find any serious market research on this, but I’ve heard it from three manufacturers now—Tecnam, Legend and Flight Design—and it seems to be an accelerating trend. I don’t think it has to do with the inability to afford bigger, more capable airplanes. People who can afford to pay an unleveraged $600,000 for a new airplane aren’t likely to suddenly discover they can’t afford the maintenance or the fuel to fly it 100 hours a year. What Yeager finds is that such buyers get into an over-capacity situation. They don’t see the value of owning an asset that expensive and using it to bore holes in the sky at 18 gallons per hour. In other words, just because you can afford something, doesn’t mean you want to buy it or keep it if you already own it.

Another reason for this is that while we haven’t been looking that closely, top-tier LSAs have become impressively capable. The Astore, for instance, has a turbocharged Rotax 914 engine and a Garmin G3X Touch avionics suite complete with autopilot and envelope protection. It has plush seating and a generous baggage compartment. With the 914, it steams along at 120 knots and if U.S. rules allowed the constant speed prop that European rules do, it would do 130 knots. With fuel consumption under 5 GPH, that’s 29 NMPG. Not bad.

LSA manufacturers vary on this, but Tecnam’s limitations allow the airplane to be used under IFR, but not in IMC. That would make it a good IFR trainer and I wouldn’t get my law-and-order pants snagged on flying it through the odd cloud. Even limited to VFR, that’s a lot of capability for an owner who just doesn’t pound halfway across the continent frequently enough to justify a TTx.

When LSA was hatching, I don’t remember anyone ever suggesting the market would develop in this way. At the time, the airplanes were envisioned to be the modern equivalent of my Cub, suitable for training and recreational use, but hardly high-performance aviation. LSA actually predates the glass panel and I don’t think anyone saw the avionics driving sales and product development the way they have. And while light sport was supposed to stimulate new designs, I doubt if anyone foresaw quite the profusion of aircraft that would happen to also touch the high-performance end of the spectrum. In my various travels, I noticed there ain’t much religion about observing the 120-knot maximum speed restriction and many designs push the minimum useful load rule (430 pounds for a 100-HP airplane) to the breaking point.

These trends—especially the buyer profiles—continue to tell us that the real world has evolved beyond the noble initial intent of the light sport rule. Buyers are pushing back against its artificial constraints and I think they’ll continue to do so. Eventually, I suspect, we’ll see enough market pressure to raise the weight limit, remove the silly speed restriction and relax constraints against IFR usage. That still won’t stimulate a lot of volume, but it will bring in more buyers and they’ll be happier for it.

I think that will be the continuing fate of light sport. And although it might not be the fairy tale we all pined for, it’s not a bad story.

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