www.PSFmagazine.com | February 2019 | 13 12 | February 2019 | Powered Sport Flying Support Our Advertisers Light Sport Aircraft By the Numbers Big Numbers First —For our categories of “Light Sport Aircraft, Light Kit Aircraft, and Modern Gyroplanes,” the total swelled to 8,027 U.S. Aircraft Registrations, a much larger number than our last report (with data through 2016). We report details in two primary ways for two primary periods. The periods are “All-Fleet,” meaning all lsa or other Sport Pilot-Eligible aircraft that have been registered since 2004 when the rule was released; and, “Calendar Year” meaning the January to December period of the previous year. We have been doing both for several years but our reports were confined to fixed-wing or ‘Airplane’ Special Light Sport Aircraft. That is now changing to a broader view that includes all registrations. Here We Go…! All-Fleet Rankings —Our familiar category of fully-built slsa is only a fraction of everything we report now at 3,167 total aircraft or just 39% of all registrations in the new database. Making up the rest of the 8,027 registrations includes Experimental-Amateur Built (eab) (3,666 registrations or 46%), Experimental-Light Sport Aircraft (elsa) (1105 registrations or 14%) and others (89 registrations or 1%). Among slsa builders of ready-to-fly aircraft, Flight Design returned to its lead position in All-Fleet at 328 aircraft, followed by Czech Aircraft Works (271), CubCrafters (245), and Tecnam (203). Trailing these leaders are American Legend (194), Jabiru (115), Remos (107), Aeropro/Aerotrek and Pipistrel (96 each), and Evector (89). (Note: Cessna was omitted after the company ceased selling their Skycatcher and destroyed all unsold examples.) In the Kit/Other category, Zenair/Zenith (904) leads Van’s Aircraft (531) and Rans (510). The trio of leaders produce both slsa and kits, although we are just counting their kits for the purpose of this list. The next six producers have focused on eab kits over slsa versions of their models. In fact some in this next tier haven’t produced an slsa model… yet. For slsa or kits, our rule is to count only aircraft models that meet the definition of a Rank Manufacturer Main Model* No. of Aircraft Market Share 1 Zenair/Zenith CH750 904 18.6% 2 Van’s • (also many kits) RV-12 531 10.9% 3 Rans S-7LS Courier 510 10.5% 4 Sonex Sonex 428 8.8% 5 Kitfox Light Sport 310 6.4% 6 Just Highlander 264 5.4% 7 Quad City Challenger 248 5.1% 8 Progressive Aerodyne Searey 181 3.7% 9 AutoGyro MTO 167 3.4% 10 CubCrafters Carbon Cub 147 3.0% 11 Quicksilver Sport 2SE 129 2.7% 12 Powrachute Airwolf 115 2.4% 13 Arion Lightning 91 1.9% 14 Kolb Flyer SS 66 1.4% 15 Titan Tornado 64 1.3% 16 Magni M-16 55 1.1% 17 Pipistrel Sinus 52 1.1% 18 Aero Adventure Aventura II 32 0.7% 19 Silverlight AR-1 30 0.6% 20 American Legend Legend Cub 26 0.5% 20 ELA Eclipse 26 0.5% 20 ICP (Skykits) Savannah S 26 0.5% 20 Mini-Max AeroMax 26 0.5% 20 Six Chuter Legend 26 0.5% 20 Sport Performance Panther 26 0.5% All other producers 380 7.8% TOTAL KITS 4,860 * Many Companies have more than one model counted here. ** SLSA not counted. Kit/Other Aircraft Market Shares 2005 through December 2018 The 10 Densest Areas of Light Sport Aircraft Where LSA Are Based in the Continental USA
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