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Comment by ErsatzVerkehr | Hacker News Reader

In the United States, the restrictions on an "ultralight" are rather severe:

> The governing regulation in the United States is FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles, which specifies a powered "ultralight" as a single seat vehicle of less than 5 US gallons (19 L) fuel capacity, empty weight of less than 254 pounds (115 kg), a top speed of 55 knots (102 km/h or 64 mph), and a maximum stall speed not exceeding 24 knots (45 km/h or 27.6 mph). Restrictions include flying only during daylight hours and over unpopulated areas.

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This is intended to be a light sport aircraft so the comparison is not completely valid.

LSA has 2 seats, take off weight 1300lb (600kb), max speed 120knots (138 mph), no specific fuel limit.

An ultralight is good for fun, but not practical for transportation. An LSA can be used as transportation - it's about 3 times faster than a car.

My point was, the biggest barrier to flying is not the price of the plane, but the desire to jump through all the hoops to get the license, to spend time/money on maintenance, to spend time on driving to the airport.

Don't forget the relatively high risk of general aviation.

It's not a high risk mode of transportation.. It's about as "deadly" as driving a motorcycle. Sadly, if people paid more attention to motorcycles on the road, then motorcycles would be exponentially safer and if people stopped flying into bad weather then airplanes would be exponentially safer. With that being said, there is no "Relatively high risk of general aviation".. there are lots of careers and hobbies with a much higher risk.. in fact, if I remember correctly more people die of boating accidents going out on a lake than GA aircraft.

Of course more people die in boating accidents than in GA aircraft, there is way more boating.

Motorcycles are relatively high risk too.

GA is not some super-dangerous activity that's guaranteed to kill you. But let's not pretend that it's perfectly safe, either. Such an attitude does a disservice to all involved.

A GA pilot is still much more likely to die in bed than in his airplane, but the risk is substantially elevated compared to the average.

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