"Peter Dohm" wrote in message
...

Therefore, I strongly suspect that a large proportion of LSA aircraft are
simply operated over gross.

I suspect (and this could lead to a dangerous safety culture) that many
LSA's really have two gross weights. One gross weight that satisfies the
Light Sport regulation, and a "whisper" gross weight at which they really
are operated. The actual engineering of the plane may (or may not) actually
support that "whisper" figure. Of course if you guess wrong and die, it is
on you.

Just look at the useful load of the Cessna 162 with a full fuel payload of
346 #. That means that if you have full tanks and a 200# student you have
146 pounds left over for the instructor and the flight bags etc.. I call
that a 1 passenger airplane!

Vaughn