The Case for the RV-10 S-LSA

12/3/2025

Van's Aircraft offers the RV-10 as their only four seat aircraft.

On paper, the specifications are fairly impressive:

Model Price Max Cruise Speed Max Altitude Engine
Van's RV-10 n/a 175kts 24,000ft Lycoming IO-540
Cirrus SR20 G7+ $634,900 155kts 17,500ft Continental IO-360
Cirrus SR22 G7+ $914,900 183kts 17,500ft Continental IO-550
Diamond DA40-NG $627,450 154kts 16,400ft Austro Engine AE 300
Cessna 172 Skyhawk $419,620 124kts 14,000ft Lycoming IO-360

However, the RV-10 is only offered as a kit aircraft. You can't get it factory built. Van's should offer the RV-10 as a complete factory built S-LSA aircraft.

To be an S-LSA under the MOSAIC regulations that take effect July 24, 2026 an aircraft must be certificated with 4 seats or fewer, adhere to the ASTM standards, and have a dirty (Vs0) stall speed of 61KCAS or less. The RV-10, if it adheres to the ASTM standards, could qualify if Van's wants it to. And once it's an S-LSA, Van's would be allowed to fully build the RV-10 at their factory, no need to deal with the Experimental Amateur Built process.

The RV-12iS is currently Van's only 100% factory built aircraft in the US. They also offer it as a kit, which makes it easy to see what the extra assembly time at the factory and additional equipment adds to the purchase price. The kit pricing breaks down this way:

Total: $131,356

If the $189,500 entry price for an RV-12iS S-LSA is still valid and I configured the kit to be the same as the S-LSA entry level offering, that means the cost of the factory built over the kit is $189,500 - $131,356 = $58,144. That would cover the labor, paint, upholstery, the warehouse space required to store the plane, basically anything extra required to complete an aircraft not included in the kit.

The RV-10 is a more complex aircraft to build than the RV-12iS. Van's Time To Build page says the the RV-10 from the Standard kit takes 2000-2200 hours to build, while the RV-12iS is closer to 800 hours. So we'd want to multiply that $58,155 cost by 2.75x (because 2200 รท 800 = 2.75) for the RV-10 to account for that additional complexity. That means Van's could probably charge $159,926 to take a kit and turn it into a flyable airplane.

An RV-10 Standard (not Quick Build) kit cost costs $89,500, the IO-540 Engine is $83,100. They don't list a price for the avionics kit, but we can probably just assume the $24,405 Garmin G3X Touch setup from the RV-12iS price is applicable here. Add in the $159,926 estimated cost to do the factory built version of the RV-10, and it looks like total cost to buy a factory built RV-10 may be around $356,931. You may be thinking to yourself, that's a lot of money! And it surely is, inflation has driven the cost of everything up. But if you look at it in comparison to the other four seat aircraft from the start of this post, you'll see this is actually undercutting the competition.

There's not a ton of examples of four seat MOSAIC S-LSA's out yet. Here's some potential competitors:

In short, if Van's were to offer the RV-10 as a factory built aircraft, they could likely undercut the price of legacy four seaters at $356,931, while offering performance nearly as good as a Cirrus SR-22 (the most popular GA aircraft of the 21st century) which starts at $914,900. I'm probably missing some costs, and the Cirrus aircraft include a lot of extra features, and Van's needs to ensure a healthy profit margin. Even if you add extras, there's still a lot of wiggle room to keep the price lower than the legacy aircraft. It's also possible I overestimated the amount of hours needed to built an RV-10: what might take the average amateur builder 2,000 hours may take trained factory personnel quite a bit less.

Is Van's likely to do this? I think so. If you look at Van's comments during the MOSAIC comment period they were advocating to increase the limits to make it possible for the RV-10 (and RV-14) to qualify as an S-LSA. They also offer the RV-12iS as a factory built aircraft in the US, and the RV-10 as a factory built in Brazil.

What's Van's motivation to do this? Profit. Offer an airplane that performs between a Cirrus SR20 and SR22 for around the cost of a Cessna 172, and make money in the process of doing it. If my estimate of what they can sell it for is correct, and assuming there's a healthy enough profit margin in there, it would be an extremely popular aircraft. It'd lead to lots of sales and Happy Van's customers. It could also drive sales of the RV-12iS among flight schools.

Why do I want Van's Aircraft to build it? The legacy manufacturers Cessna/Textron, Piper, Diamond, Cirrus, Tecnam have all gotten complacent. They're charging easily half a million dollars for aircraft that haven't changed much in decades. People keep paying these high prices, so why should they lower their costs? Van's has the opportunity to step in and capture significant market share. Kit aircraft are cool: they should continue to offer them for those who want them. But not everyone has the time/skills/space to assemble a kit. Van's can capture market share, profit, and do the general aviation world a favor by being a major player to ignite competition. Make Cirrus look into finally adding FADEC and a Jet A option. Get Textron to bring back some of their old Cessna models with new style, or finally finish the Pipistrel Panthera. They just killed off the Beech Bonanza and Baron! Get Diamond to improve their US customer support and finally add a parachute option. Get Piper to build a single engine piston plane that doesn't look like it came from the 1960's. Get Tecnam to come down on price a bit and establish a better US presence.

What options would I like to see in a configurator for a factory built RV-10?