Aircraft Types
Aircraft typesFour ways to fly without a licence.
Part 103 does not care what shape your aircraft is. It cares about 254 pounds, one seat, five gallons, 55 knots, and a 24 knot stall. Inside that box you can have an aeroplane, a trike, a helicopter, or a parachute with an engine on it. They fly nothing alike.
20OF 26 ARE AEROPLANES
Fixed wing is not just the biggest category, it is almost the whole category. Three trikes, two helicopters, one powered parachute. If you want anything other than an aeroplane, your choice is small.
Counts are USA builders we have verified. Not aircraft, not models.
Side by side
The four types, on the things you actually decide on.
Cheapest published means the lowest figure a builder in that type publishes for hardware you can fly. Plans sets are excluded, because a $60 plan set is not a $60 aircraft. Where a type shows nothing published, nobody in it publishes a price.
01 · 20 builders
Aeroplanes.
Wings, a stick, and a field. This is where the whole category lives. Every price band from $4,000 to $58,000, every construction method, wood and metal and fabric and composite, and the only type where you can buy plans and build from scratch.
It also has the widest weather window, the deepest fleets, and the most parts. Eight of the twenty publish a price. Twelve do not. If you have not decided what you want yet, you are almost certainly buying one of these.
02 · 3 builders
Trikes.
A wing, a carriage, and your body weight as the control input. You shift, it turns. That is a different skill from a stick, not a harder one, and people who love it never go back.
The wing folds back and the whole aircraft trailers, which solves storage in a way most aeroplanes do not. One of the three publishes a price. North Wing is also the cheapest published aircraft in the entire guide that is not an aeroplane.
03 · 2 builders
Helicopters.
A helicopter with no licence and no medical. That sentence is either the most exciting thing on this site or the most alarming, and both readings are correct. Rotary flight is the steepest learning curve in aviation, and Part 103 requires no instruction at all.
It is also the most expensive type here by a factor of four, and the weight maths only works through the float and safety-device allowances. Two builders. One publishes a price. Go and get instruction anyway.
04 · 1 builder
Powered parachutes.
The gentlest way into the air, and the smallest shelf. A parachute cannot stall the way a wing can, which is the entire safety argument. It packs small, it needs a field rather than a strip, and it is the easiest of the four to learn.
The trade is wind. You fly at dawn and at dusk, or you do not fly. One USA builder in our directory, and they publish no price.
Honestly
What is not on this page.
Paramotors and powered paragliders. Foot-launched soft wings are a real Part 103 category and a big one. We do not track them yet, so we do not list them. A page that quietly omits a whole category is worse than one that says so.
Tiltrotors and powered lift. No USA builder is selling a Part 103 tiltrotor. If that changes, it goes on this page the week we can verify it.
Gyroplanes. Part 103 gyros exist. We have not verified a current USA builder for one. Same rule: not verified, not listed.
Know a builder we are missing? Tell us and we will verify and add them. It costs nothing and never will.