BUILT ALONGSIDE THE STANDARDS RATHER THAN AFTER THEM

Sling Aircraft North America has announced the Sling 2M at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, a MOSAIC-compliant version of the Sling NGT trainer manufactured by Sling Aircraft in Johannesburg, South Africa. The announcement is timed to the FAA’s acceptance of the new ASTM consensus standards ahead of the MOSAIC rule, which took effect on 24 July 2026 — and the commercially significant element of the announcement is that factory production is ready to ship immediately, with customer deliveries beginning in August 2026. The industry therefore faces no gap between the rule’s effective date and the availability of a compliant aircraft.

The absence of that gap is the direct result of a deliberate strategy. Sling has served on ASTM International Committee F37 on Light Sport Aircraft throughout the development of the MOSAIC standards over several years, and the engineering team in Johannesburg made a series of incremental design and structural refinements to the existing NGT in anticipation of where the standards were heading. Andrew Pitman, Co-CEO of Sling Aircraft, said the company had not waited for the standards to be published before beginning engineering, but had sat in the room while they were being written and made incremental changes to the NGT — structure, systems, weights, documentation — every few months so that the aircraft would already meet the rule when it arrived. He described the payoff as being able to ship a compliant aeroplane on day one rather than in eighteen months.

WHAT CHANGES, AND WHY IT MATTERS TO FLIGHT SCHOOLS

The Sling 2M is fundamentally the same aircraft operators know today, but the modifications carry disproportionate operational consequences. Maximum gross weight increases to 1,540 lb, yielding a useful load of more than 600 lb. That additional useful load enables a whole-airframe parachute system fitted to every aircraft, two large adults, and enough fuel for more than eight hours of flying without refuelling. Under MOSAIC, these aircraft may be operated under IFR — including in instrument meteorological conditions — when appropriately equipped and flown by a suitably rated pilot. Every aircraft comes standard with the Garmin AXIS Flight System, the avionics suite Garmin announced earlier this month and which integrates GPS, NAV/COMM and audio panel functions in a single display.

For flight schools the practical effects are immediate and quantifiable. A higher useful load expands the addressable student pool, since instructor-and-student weight combinations previously excluded now fall comfortably within limits — a constraint that has been a persistent commercial limitation for light training aircraft. Industry-leading safety equipment becomes standard rather than a trade-off against payload. The eight-hour fuel endurance allows fuelling once per day rather than between lessons, recovering aircraft availability, dispatch reliability and line-staff hours across an entire fleet. IFR capability extends the aircraft’s utility deeper into the training syllabus than a VFR-only trainer can reach.

THE SLING SAFETY NETWORK

Sling Aircraft North America has simultaneously launched the Sling Safety Network, an ecosystem enabling Sling NGT fleet operators to maintain shared standardisation and operational practice. Membership benefits include safety management tools, standardised training documentation, access to Navi AI Debriefs, and access to a growing roster of Sling-qualified personnel and resources. Approximately 20 flight schools across North America have selected the Sling NGT as their training platform, and the Safety Network is designed to strengthen that group as a community — raising the standardisation baseline while giving new schools a proven operational framework from the day they take delivery.

Matt Liknaitzky, Co-CEO of Sling Aircraft North America, said the company was excited to support flight schools as they grew and to give the Sling NGT community something no individual school could build alone. He said the Safety Network turned a group of operators flying the same aircraft into a network sharing standards, tools and people, and that combined with an aircraft that now carried more, flew longer and flew IFR, this represented a genuine step change for the training market. He noted that Sling offers both financing and leasing options for schools acquiring fleets, so that fleet decisions are not constrained by capital structure. The Sling 2M is available to order now, with Sling Aircraft exhibiting at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh at Sling Island, booth 648-650.