…If we had healthy flying clubs (I mean clubs, not schools pretending to be clubs) then a lot more would be going on…
We have these clubs here in Germany, plenty of them. I would say that 80 percent of light GA flying takes place there. One problem is that they tend to be very posessive of their members spare time. You have to work for the club so and so many hours per month, from changing engine oil on the airplane tug to drawing beer in the clubhouse, you are supposed to attend as many social events as possible (because a big part of the clubs income is produced by them). If you don’t show up often enough, you will soon find yourself on the bottom of every reservation list… And if you happen to have other hobbies as well your free time will soon be reduced to zero. But often and for many people it is the only way they can afford certain activities.
That’s interesting…
You get that here (UK) in sailing clubs. You are required to turn up and participate in events X times a year. They don’t like people who just pay their membership and sail or windsurf when they feel like it.
I hear gliding clubs can be like that too, with so much time spent there that everybody married ends up divorcing and the men in the club end up marrying the women in the club 
I hear gliding clubs can be like that too…
The problem with gliding is that you need three or four people on the ground to get one glider into the air. If you had to pay all these, the activity would become unaffordable. But I think that’s changing a little because many gliders are now self-launching. On the other hand, a state-of-the-art self-launching glider (single-seat…) costs in excess of 200,000 Euros which makes if only affordable if it is shared among the club members.
For me, it’s been flying with out pilots from my club.
(Our club is more like a big group that a school).
I’ve visited the other Irish airfields so many time that they hold little interest for me. I still love to fly, and would fly anywhere, but it becomes harder to justify the cost when flying to the same airfield for the umpteenth time. But by flying with someone else in the club, we each fly a leg, which means that we can go twice as far for the same cost, and it’s more fun together. The workload is more than halved.
If I hadn’t become friends with some of my fellow club members, I’m not sure if I’d still be flying. I know I’d still want to be, but would I be able to justify the cost for a few local flights? I’m not so sure.
I don’t think people stop flying because they eventually figure out that a twin turbine is a bit far to reach.
I don’t think there is any easy answer, but I think the concept of availability is an important thing. Whatever makes flying available is positive and what makes unavailable is negative. Owning your own airplane, well functioning clubs, less buerocratic hazzle, ultralights and of course homebuilding and many other things makes flying more available. Cost is of course important, but cost is connected to value. As long as we perceive we get value for our money, we are willing to pay. Value can be many things, but owning an aircraft is something most of us find “valuable”.
Peter,
exactly, we here are those who know better and can councel younger pilots, the same way the schools do but in opposite ways. That is what I have been doing all along.
The thing which needs to be overcome is exactly the flight school commercial mantra which youngsters are told: “You will N E V E R be able to afford a plane so you have to rent with us to the end of your flying days”. That is one of the main reasons people stop flying, because of the harass.
Imagine the same in a driving school? “You will never be able to afford your own car, the costs are HORRIBLE, so rent from cheapowrek for the rest of your days?”
And quite a few owners do not help by boasting their newest and most expensive planes and sneer at what other people can afford. People who buy a spamcan shortly after their license are very likely to later upgrade to something larger and newer. I had a C150 and now fly a Mooney, I recall Alexis with his PA28-140 and now Cirrus.
If we had healthy flying clubs (I mean clubs, not schools pretending to be clubs) then a lot more would be going on because they would be interesting places to go to, and people would choose to spend time there.
What we need is OWNERS Clubs with a social scene to compensate for the flying club/school scene. In a way, we do have that here. I have had several requests along the line "can you help me find a plane I can afford/what does it cost/e.t.c.) generating out of this forum and the Swiss one.
BUT we also need modern planes, not the current scene where most planes would not look out of place if pictured with Hermann Goering getting out of one of them, and that is probably literally true. The state of most of GA hardware currently flying is a massive turnoff for all but the dedicated anoraks.
For the people I talk to COST as well as the MYTH of the horrible sides of ownership are the two most turnoffs.
Actually, planes where Göring might have alighted from are valuable antique airplanes today :)
I do not think that we only need new planes. People usually learn in spam cans and stay with what they learned to fly in or something similar. If they can afford it, they prefer to fly a spam can rather than to go to the air show year after year and walk away frustrated because the planes they see there cost more than a house.
The cheap spam cans are what newbies can afford and that is why they still are attractive. Mind, I have had the business idea a while ago to found a company which buys up beaten old airplanes, redoes them professionally AND economically and resells them at prices people can afford. I understand that something like this exists in the US.
What could also very well work is to buy up some older planes, renovate them to be clean, feshly painted and with good inexpensive avionics and rent them out at cheaper prices than the schools. Pilot und Flugzeug are doing this with their flylisa product. They have 2 AA5 Cheetahs, N-Reg, IFR, which are very busy planes.
And btw, how bad does a really nicely made up Spam Can look?
When I showed this one to my wife (I almost bought it) she did not believe it’s actually a 1969 model.
And btw, here is one for you Peter
Ok, 29 k, engine overhaul would have to basically happen quite soon (it can run on codition if it’s fine for up to 400 hours but be ready) and it would need a major upgrade in avionics. I’d think this one could be a lovely project where someone can take the cell and engine core value as a base and build what HE really wants in terms of Avionics and zero the engine at the same time. A bit like the yearly AOPA Sweepstake plane.
Yes but…. not only it’s FRENCH they also stole it from:
I do think you have to be a little bit obsessed to stick with flying. You also have to have a different attitude to “getting there”. My “dispatch” rate VFR is close to 100% – why is that? I look at the weather forecast, and if I see a nice weekend I decide to go somewhere. If the weather is crummy I don’t even bother. Unlike airline flying, with private flying you accept that you don’t make firm plans on any particular date. If the date is flexible, you just go when it’s nice.
However, I think many people go in with the illusion they will be able to fly to X and beat the traffic on a particular schedule, and it’s quite disappointing when they find that there’s no such thing, and if they are having to rent they are having to plan in advance these trips (and thus have a terrible “dispatch rate” – I put it in quotes because I don’t really like the term for what I do). If you can sink the capital into an aircraft then those things go away and the frustration of the ballache of scheduling, followed by the ballache of then having to cancel that the renter gets goes away and I think you’re more likely to remain flying. I think clubs/schools could possibly get a better retention rate if they got rid of the paperwork and made scheduling a one-click thing. Certainly the club I was a member of in Houston had the right idea – online scheduling, and you just went into the clubhouse and got the keys. None of this hunting for the CFI to authorize your flight or filling in a ream of paperwork. It worked well, and we had fewer safety incidents than the traditional flight schools in the area so it’s not like it resulted in an unsafe situation.
I think also needless bureaucracy makes people give up. If you’re renting you have a whole load of that – most rental organizations have disproportionately frequent checkout requirements, and a bunch of paperwork every time you fly. Having to fill out GARs all the time really damped my enthusiasm. I enjoy flying, I don’t enjoy filling out paperwork. I know I’ll fly more trips this year just because we now have Online GAR which makes it a five second process to do the GAR now instead of faxing paperwork to seemingly everyone and his dog (and then having to do it all over again if for some reason you need to cancel). It seems silly but I just detest all the paperwork. That’s work not fun.
It’s not clear to me that presuming lack of mechanical insight or aircraft experience is the right way to view new pilots and prospective aircraft owners. People take a circuitous path through life before they arrive at becoming a pilot and my observation has been that many of them are pretty clued up and plug in to the aircraft scene without great issue. Perhaps this is a difference in the US, versus Europe.
BTW, about nine of the nicest aircraft at my base could been flown by Goring if they hadn’t been made under license in Spain. Two others (Jungmeisters) could very easily have been. I’d judge any of those to be quite interesting to a new pilot, but there’s also nothing whatsoever substandard about buying a funny modern $20K Cessna 150 
I’ve noticed a youngish looking guy flying his mid-60s C150 almost every day recently and it’s great to see. I rocked my wings as I passed him on Saturday leaving extended downwind but I think he was so intent on flying he wasn’t ready for my frivolity!
