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Comment by aidenn0 | Hacker News Reader

I believe liability is an issue too. In aviation (as compared with autos) the manufacturer is often found partially liable for an accident, so they can be on the hook even if it was mostly the fault of the operator.

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It's worse now, people are doing "51% Build Assists" (most famously Vans and Sling aircraft) to save money where the factory would give you an IKEA plane kit and you will maybe put in a few screws and decals and install the avionics panel and you will sit in the room and watch them assemble the rest of the plane "under your supervision". Then the whole thing will get penciled whipped as an Experimental Owner-Built aircraft and if anything goes wrong it's entirely the fault of the owner and not the factory, because the layman hundred hour PPL pilot is supposed to be a master of aerospace engineering.

I think MOSAIC is the only thing the FAA got right in the recent years when it comes to general aviation.

Isn’t it better?

Some people dont want to pay the extra overhead and cost burden of the manufacturer taking partial liablity. They’re willing to take a risk.

The way I see it is that it's a structural failure of the licensing system and the FAA. Imagine after a few high profile celebrity car crashes, the Feds decided that new car designs after a certain year carries manufacturer liability and everything before has no liability. If you want a car at a reasonable price, you have to go assemble your own from pre fabbed parts. It forces the industry to become all-or-nothing with no reasonable room for nuance or debate. That's basically lazy lawmaking. The powers that be are hoping that general aviation as a category goes away completely. (And the useless AOPA is complacent, support EAA folks)

And yet, because these experimental owner-built aircraft are free from many of the burdensome certification requirements, they're also free to use newer and better tech at a lower cost.

Who is safer? The person who "self-built" (but actually allowed the trained factory folks to build) a Kitfox with a full glass cockpit, modern engine, and dual FADEC, or the person who buys a 1972 Cessna Skyhawk with steam gauges?

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