Who is doing the LAPL or NPPL?
Almost all NPPL pilots I know personally are older guys who failed their class 2, so they didn’t need training.
The LAPL is a dead end, IMHO. The abbreviated course prepares you, barely, for the Shoreham to Bembridge burger run, and probably not even that. Even the full PPL doesn’t prepare you for flying anywhere interesting – like the ultra navigationally challenging Shoreham to Le Touquet burger run 
Are a lot of people really doing the LAPL?
The problem is that instructing is (usually) a bunch of people eating each other’s lunch, while waiting for a new student to walk in. The non-CPL -exam instructor is more likely to get sidelined, especially if there is some other reason for it. The exceptions are where the school is well placed.
LAPL medical requirements are lower than PPL so there might be small target population there. The LAP training is shorter than PPL but you need some hours before you can take passenger on board. So, in the end training+these hours are in total very close to PPL required hours. So, nearly dead end. And some people are still thinking in terms of “LAPL basic” originally proposed and insisted on. It did silently disappear from the final wording..
I also see the medical as the only reason for someone to get the LAPL. If a tight budget would be the reason, then going for microlight or (motor)glider is far better IMHO. Especially because the cost of flying after getting the license will be considerably lower.
Maybe for flying clubs is is easier to get licensed as a training organisation if they do LAPL only, so there may another reason here. If your flying club only offers the LAPL you don’t have much choice…
But coming back to the original topic: If instructing is considered to be an option to airline/commercial flying, I would always do the full ATPL theory and the CPL. Being restricted to LAPL instruction and differences training and similar is some kind of dead end as well. Especially as this kind of stuff is often done within flying clubs where the instructors don’t get paid (much). Instructing is work and it carries a great responsibility and therefore it must get paid. Just like airline flying.
Maybe for flying clubs is is easier to get licensed as a training organisation if they do LAPL only, so there may another reason here.
It’s the same.
For every burger run recreational pilot and let’s face it that’s a fair proportion of flying school income the LAPL is the licence that is most suitable. It’s also dead easy to convert a nppl and LAPL to a ppl.
Yes of course do the atpl TK but now you have another option of doing an FI rating first. This spreads the cost (rather than having to get TK, CPL and IR all done in 3 years). I also suspect it’s easier to pass a CPL skills test with a thousand hours total time rather than 200.
I got my PPL in 1992. I have stopped counting all the ATPL, CPL (or whatever abbreviation is cool at the moment), that have come back after spending 50-100k€ on professional airline education and never got a job in an airline. Lots of exceptions though.
Today it seems only helicopter is a viable form of professional GA (non-airliner job). Professional GA IS helicopters today. Getting helicopter rating is my bet if a job is what you want. Things can turn around quickly though, but GA helicopter pilots are often season pilots with another job on the side.
With the EASA maintenance regulations softening up, new opportunities enters. Not new exactly, but more like it was in the “old days”. You can combine being a mechanic and PPL, and if you also have instructor rating, you can probably create some kind of viable life. As a pilot only, I think life will be tough.
Doing aerial work will never pay (unless it is helicopter). There are way too many “flying bums” around, people that happily live from hand to mouth and fly as much as they can, even if they get nothing payed.
Professional GA IS helicopters today.
Don’t know. On my homebase, there are roundabout 20 permanently based business jets operated either commercially or as corporate aircraft. Generating in excess of 50 professional GA pilot jobs. Helicopterwise, there are two private helicopters with zero professional pilots and two flying school helicopters feeding a couple of instructors. On a separate base are two police and one rescue helicopters, but their pilots would object to being called “GA pilots”…
I also suspect it’s easier to pass a CPL skills test with a thousand hours total time rather than 200.
The CPL skills test must have been the easiest test in my whole flying career. I did have far less than 200, maybe even 100 hours then (by cheating a lot during the supposed “hours building” phase). It consisted of doing a positioning flight to collect the examiner at a small airfield next to his home. Not crashing during this flight and arriving in time was already half of the pass. Then I flew to a third airport with that examiner where I dropped him to his next assignment. Finding that other airport without use of navaids and managing to land on a taxiway there (he had arranged that before) was the second half of my pass…
what_next wrote:
On my homebase, there are roundabout 20 permanently based business jets operated either commercially or as corporate aircraft. Generating in excess of 50 professional GA pilot jobs.
That’s really nothing considering that your homebase serves about 4 million people and is one of the strongest economical areas in the world… Post financial crisis, the bizjet sector has become considerably smaller.
achimha wrote:
That’s really nothing considering that your homebase serves about 4 million people and is one of the strongest economical areas in the world… Post financial crisis, the bizjet sector has become considerably smaller.
Exactly. My “homebase” serves maybe 1/10 of that and has a helicopter company with some 20 helicopters (spread out over several places, but still, helicopters don’t fly that fast and need to be stationed where the work is at any given moment). It’s the same at all larger, and some smaller, airports. Scandinavia in total has at least 80-100 helicopter companies ranging from small one helicopter companies to 20+ helicopters. The smaller ones are often subcontracted by the larger ones. Helicopter vs business jet is at least 50:1, but Norway is not the economical center of Europe. Then there is the North Sea with hundreds of helicopters flying in regular traffic (wouldn’t call it GA though, so that is an addition). The competition is hard there as well as I understand, but nowhere near like it is for airline pilots and fixed wing GA.
Anyway, 2-3 pilots with a helicopter can make a living today, lots of them do because helicopters are in demand for all kinds of things by several industries and for more private stuff. Flying executives in biz-jets is an extremely narrow niche in comparison.
Isn’t the reason for this that
(in reality helicopters can fly in almost any wx short of solid fog, and if it gets too bad they can just land somewhere)Anyway, 2-3 pilots with a helicopter can make a living today, lots of them do because helicopters are in demand for all kinds of things by several industries and for more private stuff.
Maybe in Scandinavia with it’s oil industry, remote settlements etc. Here in Central Europe, there is hardly any private helicopter traffic at all. The handful of pilot positions with the 2 or 3 Austrian companies that do resupply flights to mountain huts, support Alpine construction work and so an are easily filled with pilots retiring from the armed forces.
