Early microlights were notoriously unsafe, mostly home built and requiring no certification of air worthiness. Due to their home built roots, most designs were unstable and lacked a safe performance profile, often inadequately rated components were used in their construction and failure rate was extremely high.

Designs have matured over the last decade, and the introduction of an ultralight pilots licence and course of examination, has ensured that those people flying them, are both qualified and capable to do so. Although interestingly, there is still no licensing requirement to pilot a microlight in the USA.

The build quality of microlight aircraft has risen dramatically, there are now a myriad of companies producing ready-built aircraft, some of which are quite capable of passing the stringent tests required to obtain standard civil aviation certification. Although general requirements are still below that of general civil craft, many manufacturers have chosen to design and produce aircraft, that can stand up to the rigorous examination required for non-microlight craft.

One of the major problems of early microlight aircraft was the component quality. It was not uncommon for the engine to be taken from an old motorcycle, the airframe form a disused hang glider and then running gear fabricated from tube steel. Today we have custom made components, newly manufactured and incorporated into these new aircraft, as a result, component failures have reduced to a nominal level.