Watch Video: “What Exactly is MOSAIC?”

The U.S Trump Admin­is­tra­tion has deliv­ered yet again on its promise to help the eVTOL Indus­try devel­op faster and achieve reg­u­la­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, by remov­ing out­dat­ed con­trols and rid­ding itself of the red tape that has imped­ed progress. Wel­come MOSAIC: the new rapid, yet safer path to approval.

MOSAIC (Mod­erni­sa­tion of Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion) rule, will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact eVTOL air­craft by allow­ing them to be cer­ti­fied as Light Sport Air­craft (LSA). 

This should stream­line the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, mak­ing it eas­i­er and faster for elec­tric air taxis to enter the mar­ket. It will also open up new pos­si­bil­i­ties for eVTOL design and oper­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small­er, per­son­al-use craft like Dri­ve & Fly and gen­er­al fly­ing vehi­cles. JoeBen Bevirt, for exam­ple, was enthus­ing about this new rul­ing on ‘X’ last week along with oth­er lead­ing play­ers involved in the eVTOL indus­try.

Please Watch Video (U.S. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary, Sean P. Duffy, Announc­ing MOSAIC Last Week at Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin)

A good exam­ple of a com­pa­ny who will great­ly ben­e­fit is Air Aero. MOSAIC will enable the company’s AIR ONE, an air­craft for per­son­al use, to be among the first to qual­i­fy for Light Sport Air­craft (LSA) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

While many have focused on air taxis, AIR decid­ed from day one to cre­ate a per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle. Now, after years of work­ing close­ly with the FAA and oth­er par­ties along­side exten­sive flight test­ing and safe­ty val­i­da­tion, the com­pa­ny has received a clear path for­ward to cer­ti­fy its AIR ONE, bring­ing it to the con­sumer mar­ket quick­er than most oth­er com­peti­tors.

Rani Plaut, CEO and Co-Founder of AIR, enthused, “From day one, AIR has advo­cat­ed for the first cer­ti­fied eVTOL air­craft to fly in the pri­vate sec­tor under LSA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. We have worked exten­sive­ly with the FAA and our peers in the space to make this a real­i­ty and to cre­ate this stream­lined cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way.”

He con­tin­ued, “Thanks to this for­ward-think­ing approach, and with this lat­est FAA MOSAIC update, we will be the first cer­ti­fied, pilot­ed eVTOL air­craft in cus­tomers’ hands and to fly in the pub­lic domain.”

Aero One and Rani Plaut

Duffy remarked, “This new rul­ing will pro­mote bet­ter designs, safer mate­ri­als and upgrad­ed tech­nol­o­gy in the recre­ation­al avi­a­tion sec­tor. Our pilots and plane man­u­fac­tur­ers have cor­rect­ly not­ed out­dat­ed reg­u­la­tions were inhibit­ing inno­va­tion and safe­ty. No more. Let’s bring this indus­try into a new age!” 

Bryan Bed­ford, FAA Admin­is­tra­tor, affirmed, “This land­mark rule aims to increase the avail­abil­i­ty of safe, mod­ern and afford­able air­craft for recre­ation­al avi­a­tion, flight train­ing and cer­tain aer­i­al work.” Adding, “This is a huge win that will fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form gen­er­al avi­a­tion.” 

The Mod­ern­iza­tion of Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (MOSAIC) final rule makes sweep­ing changes to the Light Sport Air­craft (LSA) cat­e­go­ry and to Sport Pilot priv­i­leges, expand­ing a safe alter­na­tive to exper­i­men­tal ama­teur-built air­craft by:- 

: Remov­ing the weight lim­it, which allows for more safe­ty fea­tures and safe­ty-design flex­i­bil­i­ty.

: Encom­pass­ing air­craft with high­er speeds, more seats and retractable land­ing gear.

: Allow­ing for new types of propul­sion and mod­ern avion­ics.

: Grant­i­ng aer­i­al work with LSA such as infra­struc­ture and for­est inspec­tions, photography/filming, and agri­cul­tur­al sur­veil­lance.

: Approv­ing pilots oper­at­ing under Sport Pilot priv­i­leges to fly a broad­er range of air­craft.

: Reduc­ing reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments by expand­ing the types of air­craft that qual­i­fy as LSA and the types of air­craft pilots can fly under Sport Pilot priv­i­leges.

(Cred­it: Mosa­ic House Bahrain)

Back­ground

LSAs are small, light­weight air­craft that are easy to fly. They include air­planes, glid­ers, pow­ered para­chutes, weight-shift-con­trol air­craft, heli­copters, gyro­planes, bal­loons, and air­ships. A pilot can oper­ate most LSAs with a Sport Pilot cer­tifi­cate, which is eas­i­er to earn than a pri­vate pilot cer­tifi­cate but comes with more lim­i­ta­tions.  

The FAA cre­at­ed the LSA cat­e­go­ry and the Sport Pilot cer­tifi­cate in 2004 to enable the man­u­fac­ture and use of safe and eco­nom­i­cal air­craft for recre­ation and flight train­ing. The sol­id safe­ty record of LSAs showed that the FAA could safe­ly expand this air­craft cat­e­go­ry. 

The FAA pro­posed the MOSAIC rule in July 2023 and eval­u­at­ed more than 1,300 pub­lic com­ments on it. The agency made key changes based on the com­ments, includ­ing high­er stall speeds for LSA, high­er stall speed lim­its for Sport Pilots, and vol­un­tary man­u­fac­tur­er com­pli­ance with FAA noise stan­dards.

Next Steps

Changes for sport pilots and light-sport repair­men take effect 90 days after the final rule pub­lish­es. Changes for LSA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion take effect 365 days after the final rule pub­lish­es.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.airev.aero

(Top image: U.S. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary, Sean P. Duffy — Cred­it: Kristie Boyd)

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