Apparently not in Germany, albeit nearly all German Pilots dream of the Scandinavian liberties.
Source: http://www.lba.de/DE/Presse/Statistiken/Statistik_LizenzenLandesluftfahrtbeoerden.html?nn=700678
We do witness a great interest within the general public and our school (and the surrounding clubs) are packed and lack instructors, not students, even without regular advertising. And yes, comparatively many women and young people in general are among the new pilots. I like that, it counteracts the “old sour men”-clubs you still meet in some places.
mh wrote:
Apparently not in Germany, albeit nearly all German Pilots dream of the Scandinavian liberties.
I don’t think the figures are comparable. EASA licenses don’t expire so the number of licenses don’t say much about the number of active pilots. The figures from the Swedish CAA were for licenses with a valid class rating (which do expire).
We do witness a great interest within the general public and our school (and the surrounding clubs) are packed and lack instructors, not students, even without regular advertising. And yes, comparatively many women and young people in general are among the new pilots. I like that, it counteracts the “old sour men”-clubs you still meet in some places.
That’s great!
mh wrote:
it counteracts the “old sour men”-clubs you still meet in some places.
That is a politically incorrect statement. What is wrong with sour old men?
C210_Flyer wrote:
That is a politically incorrect statement. What is wrong with sour old men?
Nothing as such, apart from the idea that past-times exclusively entertained by sour old men eventually die with the same. 
Patrick, I think as you age you’ll find to your frustration that some places are perpetually filled with sour old men… The ranks of large company middle management comes to mind New sour old men are being created every day.
Silvaire wrote:
New sour old men are being created every day.
True – but if today’s sour old men took up flying when they were young and the tale is that young people don’t fly anymore (I agree with mh – can’t really see that happening around here) – then I could be very lonely when it’s my turn to be a sour old man (and it’s all so relative, some places I go to now, I feel like I am – definitely old, maybe sour in comparison ).
There are few aspects of life today that aren’t being affected by the aging of the post-war population boom. I am actually more ‘concerned’ about the rising age of participants in other aspects of my life, motorcycling for instance. In that case it affects the type of new motorcycles that have become available to me, and as a result I’ve stopped buying new. The average (55+) year old motorcyclist today thinks of a long term purchase as 5 years, not 30 years, has little interest in long term sustainability, and will throw silly amounts of money around to get that last 5 year hurrah. Not my scene or perspective, and that’s one reason I’m now more into spending money on aviation.
I’m looking forward to attractive planes at attractive prices. Adopting to your circumstances can have some positive aspects, and in flying the positives of time going by are so far exceeding the negatives (for me personally).
Now with all the new regulations that are coming from EASA we have a very good chance of changing this trend. I think GA have been at rock bottom and will start to slowly climb up again.
