"The FAA has no intention of doing away with Part 103," FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said Friday about her agency’s rule authorizing and regulating ultralight aircraft. Some visitors to AirVenture have observed that the Ultralight Area seems to have fewer aircraft and exhibitors than in prior years. And some in the ultralight community are wondering about the future of Part 103, now that the light-sport aircraft (LSA) market is taking off.

Blakey said the entry of Cessna and Cirrus aircraft into the LSA market demonstrates that light sport has become "mainstream and real" and that it will be "a firmly rooted part of aviation’s future." Companies like Cessna and Cirrus wouldn’t get into LSA, she added, if they didn’t think it was an important market.

The growing LSA market offers new opportunities for young people to fly and, "it’s a catalyst for ingenuity and new designs," Blakey added. It represents "an avenue into aviation that just wasn’t there" before the sport pilot/light-sport aircraft rule was finalized at EAA AirVenture in 2004.

"It seems to me," Blakey said, "that there is a natural migration" occurring from ultralights to light-sport aircraft because of the opportunity that LSAs represent, "but that doesn’t mean there won’t also be a tremendous draw into ultralights. The aircraft are different and I think the incentives to fly them are different"

Ultralights, she said, represent "a true individuality and freedom, and that’s going to continue."