I agree with almomst everything Bill Hannahan said.  We SHOULD be allowed to buy non-certified aircraft from professional builders.  We SHOULD be required to waive the right to sue the manufacturer for anything -- workmanship, design, anything.

 

Where BIll is wrong is where he states --

 

 

It may be faster, quieter and more efficient, but it will not be safer.

 

I have been a homebuilder for over a decade, and a lurker for two decades before that.  I have been a senior engineer at a certified airplane company for four years.  The FARs governing certification virtually guarantee that certified airplanes are safer.  The rules do not make them less likely to break, but they ensure that the consequences of failure are commensurate with their likelihood.  (Put it simply -- if the effect of a failure are "minor", it's allowed to happen more often than failures whose effects are "hazardous".)  This characteristic of the cerification process dominates virtually every element of certified airplane design.  Not even the most anal homebuilder -- and believe me, the Lancair ranks have many of these folks, including myself at times -- builds their airplanes to that standard across the board.

 

I often (informally) summarize this approach as saying that "The FAA is the single biggest reason for the lack of progess in aviation, but simultaneously the single biggest reason why aviation is so safe."  It often pisses me off what the government makes us do in the certified world, but it does provide a level of safety that we collectively find acceptable.

 

So I agree with BIll that good things will happen if we take the shackles off of the professional builder community, and transfer some responsibility from the government to the individual, but I disagree that homebuilts are safer.

 

- Rob Wolf