In article ET,
writes:
It's the BFI with a 2 place that has given 500 "lessons" but never
solo'd a student that is against it... why? I have no idea....

Actually, most of the real BFI's I've talked to are against it. The
reason is, if I understand it correctly, that it takes your currently
usable training aircraft and regulates it out of use in 3 years, and
forces you to buy a factory built aircraft to teach in instead. I know
that I won't be able to make that kind of financial stretch to keep on
teaching - it simply won't pay back - and resent being forced to when I
have a perfectly serviceable aircraft now. I expect most other BFI's are
in the same situation.

So in 3 years many of the current BFI's will be forced out of business.
That means fewer people to train new pilots, and more expensive training
if you can find it. It's not even clear whether many manufacturers will
even be willing to sell completed aircraft for training use, with the
potential liability issues there. So you may be forced to train in GA
aircraft and then self transition into lighter UL types. Less training
and training in a different class of aircraft than you are actually going
to fly in probably won't do good things for the accident rate. :-(

And if you buy a factory built aircraft, you can't do your own work and
repairs on it, so it has to go to an AP, again increasing costs to the
BFI, and thence to the student. Too high a cost is what has shrunk the
American flying public from about 800,000 at it's peak down to the
current 500,00 or so.

IMHO - Sport Pilot could be ok, IF they left the 2 seat training
exemption in place, and just bumped up the UL empty weight limits to 350#
for part 103 and 600# for 2 seaters under the training exemption. But as
we last saw it, it looks like it's intended to screw the current BFI's
out of existance and force all training to the existing GA CFI's. I'd
rather have what we have now than that.

Kevin