Burt Rutan’s Legacy in the Pattern
If you’ve spent time at a general aviation airport, you’ve seen one: a sleek, pusher-engined aircraft with a small winglet-tipped canard out front and a smooth composite fuselage that looks like something from a different decade than the 1970s when it was designed. Burt Rutan’s canard pusher designs were genuinely revolutionary when they appeared — they upended assumptions about what an affordable homebuilt aircraft could achieve in range, speed, and efficiency — and they’re still remarkable aircraft decades later.
For South Shore Flyers, the Long-EZ and the Cozy family (which evolved from Rutan’s designs) are compelling candidates for members who prioritize long-distance efficiency and want an aircraft that can genuinely cover the Great Lakes corridor in a way that makes even the RV series work harder to match.
The Canard Pusher Concept
Understanding why these aircraft perform the way they do requires a brief trip into aerodynamics. In a conventional aircraft, the horizontal tail produces a downward force to balance the main wing’s tendency to pitch nose-down. That downward force is effectively wasted lift — you’re burning fuel to overcome it. In a canard design, the smaller foreplane (the canard) is placed ahead of the main wing and produces upward lift, contributing positively to total lift rather than subtracting from it.
Combined with the pusher propeller configuration — which places the engine behind the passengers and drives the propeller in undisturbed air rather than behind a fuselage — canard designs achieve excellent aerodynamic efficiency. The result is a cruise speed and range combination that simply cannot be matched at the same power and fuel burn by a conventional design of similar size.
There’s an additional safety feature worth noting: canard designs have near-stall-proof characteristics. The canard is designed to stall before the main wing, causing the nose to drop and naturally recovering the aircraft before a full main-wing stall can develop. In practice, this means these aircraft are very difficult to spin — an inherent safety characteristic that many pilots appreciate.
Long-EZ: The Two-Seat Distance Machine
The Long-EZ, introduced in 1979, is the direct descendant of Rutan’s VariEze and represents the design in its most refined two-seat form. Powered typically by a Lycoming O-235 or O-320 producing 115–160 hp, Long-EZ performance numbers are striking:
- Cruise speed: 170–185 mph (148–161 knots) at 65–75% power
- Fuel burn: 5.5–7 gph at cruise — exceptional for this speed
- Range: 700–1,000+ nm on standard tanks; many examples have been fitted with fuel extensions that deliver 1,400+ nm range
- Useful load: 500–580 lbs in a well-built example
- Seating: Two in tandem — pilot in front, passenger in back
That combination of 175 mph cruise at 6 gph is almost uniquely competitive in light aircraft. A Long-EZ flying from KMGC to Oshkosh burns roughly 11 gallons each way. A Long-EZ flying nonstop from KMGC to Mackinac Island is a comfortable 90-minute flight without filling up. Flying to Put-In-Bay, Ohio for lunch and back is a two-hour round trip that costs under $90 in fuel.
Cozy III and Cozy IV: The Club-Practical Evolution
The Cozy design — developed by Nat Puffer starting in the early 1980s as a derivative of the Long-EZ — extended the concept to accommodate three and four seats in a side-by-side front cockpit layout with a rear seat or rear bench. The Cozy IV in particular is the most practical canard pusher for flying club use, offering:
- Cruise speed: 165–180 mph at 75% power
- Fuel burn: 7–9 gph with the larger O-360 engine typically used
- Useful load: 620–750 lbs in a well-built example
- Seating: Side-by-side front seats plus a rear bench capable of carrying two smaller adults or one adult and child
The additional seats make the Cozy IV substantially more useful for a club where members may want to fly with families or take a two-couple trip to Mackinac Island. The tradeoff is a more complex build and higher gross weight, but the fundamental performance advantage over conventional designs remains.
IFR and Avionics Potential
Canard pushers are excellent IFR platforms. The composite fuselage accommodates avionics installations well, the aircraft’s inherent stability makes autopilot coupling effective, and the efficiency at altitude that these designs offer becomes even more valuable when flying in the IFR environment at cruise altitudes. Many Long-EZ and Cozy examples are equipped with full glass panels and fly regularly in actual IFR.
The Cozy IV in particular, with its side-by-side seating in front and good avionics real estate on the panel, can be configured as a capable IFR cross-country machine that genuinely competes with much more expensive certified alternatives.
Build Complexity: The Real Consideration
Canard pushers are composite aircraft. Building one requires developing comfort with fiberglass, foam, and epoxy work — a different skill set than the aluminum sheet metal work of the RV series. Build times for a Long-EZ or Cozy IV are typically 3,000–5,000 hours or more, compared to 1,500–2,000 hours for an RV with a quick-build kit.
For a flying club that’s buying a flying example rather than building from scratch, this matters less than the market implications: good used Long-EZ and Cozy aircraft are available, but the supply is more limited than the RV market, and the inspection and purchase process requires a canard-knowledgeable A&P and ideally a canard-experienced pilot for the pre-purchase test flight.
Operational Considerations
Canard pushers have characteristics that require type-specific training and awareness:
- CG discipline: Loading must stay within the specified range — canards are sensitive to weight-and-balance, particularly forward CG. Proper loading procedures must be habitual.
- Solo from front seat only: The Long-EZ and most Cozy configurations cannot be flown solo from the rear seat due to CG limitations. Members need to understand this as a non-negotiable operating limitation.
- Landing technique: The nose-high pitch attitude on approach and the main-gear-first landing technique differ from conventional aircraft and require a proper checkout from a canard-experienced CFI.
- Visibility: The pusher configuration provides excellent forward visibility, but rearward visibility is limited — crosswind situational awareness requires attention.
None of these considerations are disqualifying. They are known, documented, and teachable — the standard for any type-specific checkout.
What Founding Members Decide
The Long-EZ and Cozy represent an intriguing option for founding members who prioritize range, efficiency, and a genuinely distinctive flying experience. The question is whether the operational constraints and more limited used-aircraft supply suit what the club is looking for versus the more accessible RV series or the higher-performance Glasair option.
That’s your call to make. Join the South Shore Flyers Founders List and be part of the aircraft selection discussion. Your priorities — two seats or four, simplicity or maximum efficiency, aluminum or composite — will shape what this club flies.
