Croatian economy started to record positive GDP numbers only last year while Poland didn’t get negative growth even in 2008/2009. This year BDP growth will be +2% which is barely enough to reverse trends in growing unimployment and young people massively leaving the country. Being beautiful country with some of the most scenic sites in Europe obviously isn’t enough to make economy works. We need more knowledge, mire conpetence, more political wisdom, more investments and less corruption. It’s long way ahead before Croatia becomes welthy country/society.
I think the thing which people find hard to believe about Croatia, and this is exactly the same in Greece, is that there is a good number of very wealthy people in all these countries, yet GA has not taken off despite having an obviously high value – much higher than in most of Europe where, centrally at least, you have good roads and good airline options etc.
In Croatia you cannot fly on an airline anywhere useful, except via Zagreb, and same in Greece. In both countries you can get onto the holiday flights to UK and Germany etc but no way to fly between (most of) Croatia and anywhere else. And Croatia is way ahead of Greece because avgas is almost everywhere.
On top of all this, while a PPL in N Europe delivers almost no utility value (due to crap wx), south of the Alps you can fly VFR most of the time. You would spend 50k/year on avgas before you would get fed up with the wx 
So one would think there would be a nice PPL business for people wanting to visit the islands.
Also Croatia has fantastic airports for training e.g. the fully equipped but cheap airport at Zadar, with a beautiful city to stay in. Compare this with staying in the usual sh1itty hotel in Bournemouth.
Back on the topic, I don’t think PPL costs have gone up more than general inflation. In 2000 when I was doing mine, a basic 45hr job would have been under 5k GBP. Mine cost me 6.5k total – I think I took 60hrs or so. Aged 43, which is also a factor; in fact there is a scarily accurate formula for predicting how long you will take, based on your age!
I’d like to see the Swiss “20k” PPL cost breakdown.
There is an other influence. EASA prescribes “block time” as experience, and you have considerable amounts on the ground. Many of our students have more than the 45 hours block time, but often around this figure in flight time. Now, the instructor gets paid for the block time, but the aircraft is just paid for the actual flight time. So the offers are not too far off the real costs.
Then, in an aero club many people do need longer than a year, but that is mainly due to their time schedule. I have had several students working concentrated on their lessons and always got to the lessons prepared. Those managed to get the license well within a year. The record was a student who did all PPL training within half a year, but she was still in school and had much time to study and was quick in learning. (I know that commercial en-block-teaching is faster, but bear in mind that all our instructors only instruct in their free time!)
But I think the costs to the license isn’t that important to many people and often is the wrong question. Many want to fly and get into aviation and so it is more a question of the monthly / annual budget that they can fly on. And if the goals and budget fit, there might even be a cheaper route in training on your own aircraft. We do that occasionally and have good results with that. But then again our club is basically non-profit and any owner is a better deal for the club (renting hangar space, selling fuel) than a renter that is not seen after again after a couple of years. Any renter has to fly at least 100 hours to generate the same “income” as one member with an own aircraft, buying just 50 hours worth of fuel every year.
In Norway the PPL cost (all in all) is listed at about 8-12 k€. For helicopter multiply that by two – three (when starting from scratch), but PPL-A to PPL-H is also an interesting route, the added price is about the same as IR.
Peter wrote:
I’d like to see the Swiss “20k” PPL cost breakdown.
Here you go: http://www.flugplatzwangen.ch/flugschule/privatpilot-ppl I just chose one of the schools Mooney_Driver mentioned. What do you get? 35 hours of flight time (estimated as 45 hours of block time) in a C152 at 210 CHF per hour and 70 hours of instruction at 87 CHF per hour (taking just the two biggest expenses).
But it seems I managed to pick one from the low end so: http://www.birrfeld.ch/flugschule/motorflugschule/preise/ 45 hours in a DA20 (it actually looks like flight hours) at 136.8 CHF per hour (you need a 650 CHF package to get this rate) plus 90 hours of instruction at 93 CHF per hour. So more flight hours, cheaper (even after counting in the package) and in a newer machine. Ground school and landing fees seem roughly comparable.
boscomantico wrote:
But where they live too far away from a suitable place outside Switzerland, it doesn’t make sense.
I met a couple of students at the Geneva aeroclub who told me they wanted the best training available and they could only get that in Switzerland.
From Martin’s 2nd link, google translated:
It’s like a Chinese takeaway menu!
who told me they wanted the best training available and they could only get that in Switzerland.
I wonder what you do get. AFAIK they do teach people to fly through the canyons (what most call “mountain flying”) but otherwise do people come out able and confident to do substantial foreign trips? On my longer trips I don’t recall meeting a particularly high % of Swiss pilots. One meets pilots of all those nations who are comfortable speaking English, basically…
mh wrote:
The record was a student who did all PPL training within half a year, but she was still in school and had much time to study and was quick in learning.
Woah. That seems like a lifetime to me. It took me about 10 weeks to get my PPL and I have a friend who did it much faster.
How do people make it taking lessons for a year? I would have forgotten so much between lessons…
Cost me $9400 all in. That is AC time, CFI time, materials, (nice) headset, checkflight, and transport costs to/from airport.
What is “flight hours 45 h” and “flight instructor 90 h” ? 8370/90 = 93 CHF = 85 € or 800 NOK per hour. For each flight hour you pay 186 CHF to an “instructor” ? Each training hour costs 3222.8 CHF ?
Peter wrote:
AFAIK they do teach people to fly through the canyons (what most call “mountain flying”) but otherwise do people come out able and confident to do substantial foreign trips? On my longer trips I don’t recall meeting a particularly high % of Swiss pilots.
I can’t speak for Birrfeld but in Geneva you will get foreign trip training and kit support (eg liferaft / lifejackets / Jeppesen trip kits etc) and trips are often organised to Italy / Germany / France. Probably not “seven hour leg substantial” though, but we have a fair number of people that have done say the Latecoere raid ( http://en.raid-latecoere.org ), or gone flying in South Africa, Central America or the US.
As far as percentages are concerned – it is a small country to begin with… so probably that is going to affect numbers more that English proficiency.
LeSving wrote:
What is “flight hours 45 h” and “flight instructor 90 h” ? 8370/90 = 93 CHF = 85 € or 800 NOK per hour. For each flight hour you pay 186 CHF to an “instructor”
Birrfeld probably charges for instructor ground time as well. Not all clubs do.
