Here they come: The Federal Aviation Administration just lifted regulations on light-sport aircraft. "Our recreational pilots and plane manufacturers have correctly noted outdated regulations were inhibiting innovation and safety," said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement. "No more. Let's bring this industry into a new age!"

The new Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification (MOSAIC) rule makes huge changes to how light-sport aircraft are regulated: It majorly ups weight and speed limits; includes aircraft with retractable landing gear and more seats; allows "for new types of propulsion and modern avionics" (including provisions to deal with simplified flight controls); and lets "pilots operating under Sport Pilot privileges to fly a broader range of aircraft." This is actually a really good thing for people who care about innovation!

"The safety continuum makes sense," writes Eli Dourado on his Substack newsletter. "US airlines carry hundreds of millions of paying passengers per year. Those passengers have high safety expectations, particularly because some of them feel out of control on an airliner in a way that they don't in a car they're driving or riding in. The airline business doesn't work without a high safety bar.…At the other end of the safety continuum, there are some pretty big benefits to allowing experimentation. The system of permissionless innovation under which the Wright brothers worked is directly responsible for us having aviation at all. We made rapid progress in the early days of aviation by sacrificing a lot of test pilots. Even today, new aviation technology often starts out in the experimental and light-sport world and works its way up to airliners over time as safety regulators figure out how to certify it as safe. Composite materials are one example—they were used in experimental aircraft for decades before the 787 became the first majority-composite airliner."

Dourado also notes that the loosening of these rules allows new entrants in the field to hire talent and start companies. "Let's say you were starting a company to build airliners," he adds. "You could have trouble finding engineers with Part 25 experience—you might have to hire them away from Boeing or Airbus. But fortunately, it's relatively easy to find engineers who have built experimental or Part 23 aircraft before." Basically, there are huge benefits to having a bias toward allowing innovation and experimentation, and there are actually huge safety costs to overregulating this industry, since innovation will be crippled and we'll lose out on unseen, unknowable advancements.

The upshot, per Dourado: "By making a category of aircraft that doesn't require type certification, is actually useful for transportation (250 knots and 4 seats), and can be flown with less skill via simplified flight controls, FAA is opening the door to a bigger market and vastly more innovation."