Sport Pilot Talk

Bryan, an ELSA or SLSA has a pink airworthiness certificate. Same as an E-AB. So no, legally it is not certified. The word certified means (in FAA speak) that the aircraft has a standard airworthiness certificate - period.

As for instruction and rental, that's covered in the FAR revisions issued in Oct 2004, that created SLSA, ELSA, SP, CFI-S, LSRM, LSRI, etc. An SLSA may not be used in commercial service, except for flight instruction, rental, and towing of light sport gliders. An ELSA does not have those exceptions, unless an LoDA is in effect.

A recent NPRM proposes simplifying and expanding LoDA issue to allow ELSAs to be used for instruction - will probably take a couple of years for that to go through (if at all)

This thread is from 2014, so I may have opined already...

We’re just debating semantics. If a plane has a “certificate”, then it can be considered “certificated”.

E-LSA’S and E-AB’s both have “certificates”, so there’s that.

But I think the term has come to loosely mean an aircraft with a standard airworthiness certificate, so there’s that.

edited to add: I see the Professor ninja’d me. And added “FAA-speak” into the equation. So there’s that!

A standard airworthiness certificate certifies the aircraft conforms to a FAA type certificate.

A special airworthiness certificate certifies that the aircraft met all applicable regulations for the issue of the certificate at the time of issuance.

The certificate are certifying two completely different things.

3Dreaming wrote:The certificate are certifying two completely different things.

Well said, Tom.