Quote Originally Posted by Av8r3400 View Post
At this point with Basic Med, there really is little or no reason to make such a broad sweeping change to the rules.
I agree with this. The problem is not the light sport weight limit. I assume, based on the very tiny fraction of pilots that hold Light Sport certificates, that the majority of pilots exercising light sport privileges are certified as private pilots or higher, but don't want to get a medical. BasicMed partially fixed this, but it's still pretty onerous, and still requires a 3rd class exam at least once. Medical certification is the problem that Light Sport is mitigating, and it's where the FAA should direct its attention instead of revising the light sport definition.

This won't happen though. It's a much harder sell in Washington to say you want to relax medical certification requirements. It's too easy to paint a picture of little planes raining out of the sky as pilots suffer heart attacks that somehow could have been prevented if they'd seen a government doctor 5 years ago. A mundane change to some airplane definition in 14 CFR 1.1 tends to raise fewer eyebrows. And then there's the fact that after years and years of EAA and AOPA effort, we got BasicMed. I don't think anyone in Washington wants to revisit the topic soon.