While countries in Europe continue to produce fully built and safe gyroplanes that are becoming increasingly popular with pilots there, the FAA doesn’t have a cost-effective way for manufacturers or importers to do the same in the United States. The first impact is born out of bureaucratic intransigence from the FAA’s Rotorcraft Directorate. In the end, it certainly makes for an interesting market. It is easy to see how that might happen because most rotorcraft professionals come from military or civilian helicopter backgrounds, and it is human nature to gravitate toward what we’re familiar and comfortable with. Helicopters also have “favored nation” status within the FAA.

Perhaps some of these new gyroplane producers will be designing helicopters 10 years from now…who knows. Quite a different pedigree from the helicopter purists. Many of them instead come from a weight-shift-control trike background, and many of those manufacturers come from the hang-gliding world.

However, they really are two completely different machines with different regulations and different manufacturers producing them.įor example, a lot of the new gyroplane manufacturers in Europe do not come from a helicopter or even rotorcraft background. Combining gyroplanes and helicopters in one buyer’s guide has been the traditional KITPLANES® approach over the years, and it seems to work because, well, these two types of aircraft look sort of alike, the FAA kind of lumps them in together, and of course they both have those big spinny things on top.

Popular rotorcraft association