Ibra wrote:
PS: I have yet to see 130TAS at 25L/h in two or four seats Rotax that you can buy under 200k$
Then we’ll need to fly in my 914 turbo powered Europa monowheel (when I could get it out of Ukraine): 120kts IAS@20l/h, 136kts IAS@25l/h. I rarely fly above 9000ft where 150KTAS is usual speed. And these numbers are with a not cleaned plane. If I clean it before flying, add 4knots on the IAS figures. A second hand Europa with a 914 should go for less than 60KEUR these days.
I think there are bigger factors in suppression of GA activity, than the fuel price.
I’ve seen this from the other end: trying to organise EuroGA meet-ups since around 2013. Post-CV19 it has become very hard. So many of the regulars (pilots who have been flying for say 20 years, often holding an IR, and not apparently money-limited) have dropped out. CV19 and its lockdowns has driven a lot of people to re-evaluate “life options”, and many people, particularly those who have not attached much priority to the social aspect of flying, have decided to chuck it all in.
Of course this is apparent in a thousand other areas of life apart from flying. We have an explosion in the demand for countryside properties, for example.
There is no obvious way to organise the sort of “free and easy” fly-ins we used to have. The “free” aspect means people can drop out the night before and it costs them nothing. The other organisations solve this by heavy organisation, block booking a hotel, and charging 3 digits for each accommodated person. Then you lock people in. I think that’s the wrong way to do it, but it works.
One of the very best attended fly-ins was Elba where avgas was €3.50/litre 
I know many filled up elsewhere but at least a half didn’t.
A lof of things in the world have changed in the last 2 years.
GA will survive but it needs to get organised so people get value out of flying, instead of aimlessly going around in circles.
I think there are bigger factors in suppression of GA activity, than the fuel price.
I agree.
Not sure about the effect of Covid, as I understand from schools demand actually went up.
For me the huge deterrent is that longer trips to attractive destinations are often hampered by out pricing, ppr/pnr for all sorts of stuff, slots and other general hassle. Many attractive destinations are gone for GA. People realize that the freedom they seek is mostly gone. That is when they chuck in and use the money for more predictable ways to travel.
Flying in the 1980ties and 19190ties was completely care free in comparison. The Botlang manual.was sufficient as docs and off you went without digging through websites and miles of NOTAMs.
Even Airline travel.these days is full of hassle and no fun anymore. I used to love it, given I had ID travel I flew lots for fun. Not today. 2 hours check in queue, document checks, irregular entry requirements even in Europe.. why bother.
Red Tape and hassle are more if a deterrent than anything else. And while EASA have taken a lot of hassle away, customs and immigration as well as airport pricing and handling mafia have killed the incentive of GA flying much more effectively.
Yes that pretty well sums it up.
One can certainly get value out of GA but one has to pick one’s battles ever more carefully. And a lot of people simply fail to do this, or apply any analysis to the process. And money is not directly connected to it.
I understand from schools demand actually went up
I am sure that’s true – people had a lot more time, including those “working from home” 
– but most of these people will either give up almost immediately or will become 5hr/year flying club members who don’t go anywhere and generate very little overall activity.
I was speaking to the police at Shoreham at the weekend. They turn up almost 100% and this time due to an internal screw-up whereby they lost both the GAR forms. They said that basically everything has become a lot more complicated, with a lot more rules, and didn’t dispute my polite assertion that most of the rules are pointless. Nobody bothers to defend blatent empire building, job creation and job demarcation. Good old 1970s trade union stuff, which we were getting rid of nicely and now it is coming back everywhere. All nicely taxpayer funded
Same with the 48hr PN at Dinard. Another polite conversation with the police, with the 48hr justified in terms of itself – 100% circular.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Flying in the 1980ties and 19190ties was completely care free in comparison. The Botlang manual.was sufficient as docs and off you went without digging through websites and miles of NOTAMs.
Now I don’t know how one can seriously conclude that flying was easier 40 years ago.
No GPS. No glass. No moving map. I did VFR flight preparation together with my father in the 1980ties. Meter over meter of maps all over the ground. Memorizing routes and landmarks. And then there was no free travel like today. It was more like 6 months preparation to be able to go to one other country.
I can tell you that flight preparation nowadays is nothing in comparison, really.
Maybe it has worsened a lot for Brits, I can imagine. From within European mainland, I do weather briefing, swipe over the tablet to plan the route, receive automatically all necessary NOTAMs and then, heck, I have to read them. I go to the aerodrome, fuel up and go to Spain from Germany. Filing the flight plan is so easy.
There are hassles, yes, but come on.
GA isn’t always about transport. I suspect the majority of GA (even excluding training) takes place within 1 hours of home base.
Personally I love to travel by GA. But my budget doesn’t extend to lots of long distance trips.
And if it was only about travel, you’d never beat commerical travel. I could leave my home in the morning and be having lunch in Greece with zero hassle for €100 return. When I get there, there will be trains/busses/taxis to take me from the airport to where I want to go. GA never be able to compete with that. While people like to moan about commerical travel, it really is pretty hassle free.
But for many of us, it’s not so much about travel, but the love of being in the sky. If a friend told me that they were doing nothing more than a few circuits and did I want to come along, I’d happily drive to the airport to jump in.
For me GA is as much about the journey as it is about the destination. For many I believe it’s more about the journey than the destination.
Where GA does have a really advantage is going to places that are hard to get to commerically. These are often remote places or islands that you’d never see if travelling commerically.
Other than those locations, it’s about enjoying the journey (preferably shared with good company) and what you see along the way.
Now I don’t know how one can seriously conclude that flying was easier 40 years ago.
I could fly to places which spit on you today. Frankfurt, Geneva, Vienna, wherever. No ppr. 15 DM landing fee. I went to France many times? Grenoble St. geoirs, Avignon, Valence, no ppr customs H24, all just with a flight plan.
No GPS? I had a pronav in my Cessna. Still have it somewhere. Later became the Garmin GPS 100.worked very well.
Yea calculating OFPs was cumbersome but nothing in comparison to today’s PPR jungle and flying was affordable. No longer.
Yes it was better and a lot easier. They can stuff most of the so called improvement up till it reaches their troth.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
No GPS? I had a pronav in my Cessna
GPS is 90ies. Pronav (later Garmin) was founded only in 1989.
In the 80ies was an oil crisis, AVGAS was costly, in relation to purchasing power.
Flying a microlight today is definitely better affordable and easier to do (all maintenance tips in the internet!) than anything back then.
Ok flying to Frankfurt is nothing I’d do nowadays. But why should one? Fly close and get an Uber! Or rent a car there. Just a click in the app.
Flying itself is the same as always – the air has not changed
Navigation is trivial today, although to be fair someone with a bit of competence in IT could have had full GPS nav around 30 years ago. I’ve had moving maps for the 20 years I’ve been flying, even though south of roughly Slovenia they were the US ONC charts from 1998.
Communication is vastly easier today than 20 years ago, due to email etc.
Access to airports is generally harder, and more expensive. This has been a gradual trend over more than 10 years. Since France did their big sweep (and other threads) c. 2011, brexit has made negligible additional difference unless you were making use of the “immigration PN” concession which was available only in Germany and Italy and which practically nobody knew about.
The notam situation is crazy today, but with satnav apps you can deal with it. Without them, one could not fly today, practically.
IFR is far easier today than when I started in 2005, when Eurocontrol were still in full swing protecting some of their paying users and were blocking autorouting tools.
Big airports (e.g. Gatwick) have not been accessible (except for financial masochists) for last 20 years. You have to go back 30+ years for that.
In the UK, the CAA’s f**ck pilots who infringe even for seconds, take no prisoners policy has made flying around major CAS shapes pretty risky. I’ve stopped flying around the 2500ft or lower parts of the LTMA, for example (use the car instead even if it is a 2hr drive) and generally prefer to fly abroad, where ATC just does the job they are paid to do.
So it is a mixed thing… I would say that for most people (who just do short burger runs) it is much easier today because they have satnav apps which hold their hand all the way.
But none of the above is related to the energy crisis. Like I said, the other factors dominate – unless one cannot actually afford to fly.
Our Syndicate had a handheld Trimble GPS in 1993 it had a jworldwide database.When trying it, I entered ADN as a VOR and handed it to G who was flying. He headed towards the NW tip of Scotland. The preferred ADN was not at Aberdeen but at Acapulco.
