The Sport Pilot license is not recommended in general for that reason, or if you need confidence to fly in Class B or C airspace. However, if you do a bunch of

The Sport Pilot license is not recommended in general for that reason, or if you need confidence to fly in Class B or C airspace. However, if you do a bunch of research it may be right for you even though it usually isn't for anybody else. For example, if I was a CFI and had a partner who flew with me, and who wanted a rating and refused to spend serious money, I might tell them to do a Sport and endorse it. But from this example you can see how super-narrow the use cases can be. Or if you own a Japanese flight school in Hawaii, and get 20 candidates per month who are doing hobby-only flying, then maybe that business model works for everybody. (This is based on a real situation. PPLs were granted to students who could not speak English on the radio, so the FAA stopped that.)