I am going to simplify somewhat but if you want a PPL and are not doing it to go commercial, you basically need:
1. An accessible airfield;
2. Savings or disposable income; and
3. Time.
The first is not so obvious in that in the UK, 81.5% of the population live in urban areas (2011 census). I live now in the western suburbs of London but when I trained, I was in london proper and it took me 25 mn to drive to my nearest airfield without traffic or 1.5 hours by public transport then a 15 mn walk and transport is an additional and material cost.
The question of cost depends on your income and whether you have family. Unless you are a wealthy young person (not due to inheritance/family), you are working hard to earn that money. If you then decide to have a social life outside of work, short of group meditation at home, you are going to spend some of that money.
If you have a family, you are spending the money on it and kids are pure cost centres (but nothing beats their smile when you get home after a long day).
Assuming you get past the first two, time or lack thereof is the real challenge. If you have a family and a non-flying / not interested in flying partner you have to be really organised on the time and pick your battles. I know 8 under 30-35 pilots and all but one are single or with “disposable” partners. I know 2 people who sound like I was in my 30’s – one day… I will learn how to fly, but money, job security, family or TIME is the usual explanation/excuse not to do it now.
I recognise that this is a somewhat narrow view and only reflecting my experience in the UK. Like many, I work 10 or more hours a day. Thanks in part to the positive example set by many on this forum, I concluded that if I really want to keep flying, there are no excuses and I just need to commit to it. On the positive side, I have learned somewhat how to make time where there did not appear to be any and not alienate (well not entirely) my family in the process.
Great post…
I have learned somewhat how to make time where there did not appear to be any and not alienate (well not entirely) my family in the process.
I think a part of getting this right when under family etc pressure is to carefully make every flight count. Very few pilots have the freedom to just pop up anytime they want. I see too many pilots who don’t seem to do this; they just do local flights to the same places over and over.
One has to get value out of flying, relative to the negatives which start the moment the wheels touch the ground, and sadly for many pilots things like family pressure are included in the negatives. It makes little difference whether you have problems with the hangar or problems with your other half moaning about your flying 
OTOH has this problem ever been different? Was GA more of a family activity way back?
Peter wrote:
OTOH has this problem ever been different? Was GA more of a family activity way back?
I don’t have any statistical data (which prob99 don’t exist anyway), but I have always noticed many more couples and families getting in and out of GA airplanes in the US than in Europe. So, from purely anecdotal evidence I’d say the where is more important than the when.
Peter wrote:
make every flight count
This has been mentioned a number of times and has stuck in my mind. Whilst due to the time issue, I have frequently not been able to fly someplace as far afield as I would like, I would still rather fly around for an hour than not at all. Even a short flight can be meaningful, be it practicing PFL’s, or nailing the altitude and not being more than 25 feet, then 10 feet, then “always” on the alt you selected or practicing different landings or just spot landing. Granted, if this is what I were to do every flight, it would get tedious, but again, I would rather fly a little regularly (every week if I can), rather than 4 hours once a month. Short hours of winter do not help or I would be heading to the airfield now to get an evening flight in after work .
Another recurring theme has been about goal setting. I would like to take the Luscombe up to Scotland at some point in the next 2 years and at 90 knots, it will not be a day trip!
Back to the PPL decline subject, I heard an interesting “statistic” during a board meeting today in that there is a decline in the number of people (in the UK) getting drivers licences as those who live in the cities cannot afford to own/lease/park and why bother when uber is around? On the cost point, and something which has been in the press in the UK over the past few years, is that many young people simply cannot afford to raise a deposit to buy a flat or a house so they end up spending more on rent.
It´s definitly true that in recent years PPL´s have declined for a number of reasons. Quite a few of these were European exams and costs, which today are at a level which is outright ridiculous for a PRIVATE license. At the same time, while cost still remains relatively high, at least from the regulatory side, there are significant improvements for private operation (Part NCO and others) which do now give new incentive for people to actually and purposefully get a PPL rather than a higher license they don´t need.
The fact that with Part NCO and ELA1/2 airplanes which are operated PRIVATELY and therefore do require naught but a PPL to fly is a massive change as opposed to before, where commercial and private requirements were much closer. Today, it makes absolutely sense to keep an airplane privately certified and due to the reduction in regulation, it has also become affordable again.
I don´t see a PPL anymore useless or nutty as I look at a private drivers license. I never wanted to drive commercially, so why bother getting a taxi license. The same goes for the PPL: To fly yourself and your family around you don´t need a CPL and never will. So for those who wnt to use their airplane or flying as a recreational or personal transport, there is no need to go higher than a PPL with possibly an IR.
Of course, the fact that due to the previous high regulation level a lot of people went for the ULM market, where license requirements are lower has definitly had an impact in PPL decline. It´s like first time buyers who think they will be happy for all their career with a C150… what I would like to see is easier bridging for such people who have started their careers in UL and eventually decide they would like to upgrade to a full PPL, to make those lower licenses part of a countable career option, as it´s done now with the EIR/CBIR as an example. I think that once people have found out that they need more than an UL to do their flying, it is only fair that they should be able to count some of their UL hours / exams towards a full PPL as far as adequate.
Lastly, I hope we shall see a future where certification becomes standard again and the non-certified way for cost issues is a thing of the past. There is no good reason why airplane certification for light airplanes up to 2 tons or so has to be so extremely expensive, as it was not so before and has only become so due to unrealistic and bureaucratic requirements.
All in all, I used to be much less optimistic if not outright pessimistic about the future of GA, but recent developments have shown that EASA of all people are ready to learn and help. And that is very encouraging indeed.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I think that once people have found out that they need more than an UL to do their flying, it is only fair that they should be able to count some of their UL hours / exams towards a full PPL as far as adequate.
I think UL time should be creditable as another category, that is at 10 % up to 10 hours for PPL(A) (meaning up to 100 hours of UL time). I don’t think there is anything for theory (unless they share exams and even in that case the passes would probably still have to be valid, i.e. less than 2 years old).
PS: For LAPL(A), it can be up to 15 hours and at 1:1 I believe. The credit is a question of assessment IIRC.
QuoteBack to the PPL decline subject, I heard an interesting “statistic” during a board meeting today in that there is a decline in the number of people (in the UK) getting drivers licences as those who live in the cities cannot afford to own/lease/park and why bother when uber is around? On the cost point, and something which has been in the press in the UK over the past few years, is that many young people simply cannot afford to raise a deposit to buy a flat or a house so they end up spending more on rent.
My view, and I appear to get continually browbeaten when I mention it, is that this is the proverbial, Elephant in the Room.
Brexit, Trump, government spin and lies, China, constant war, the salient fact, is that, people do not have any money. Certainly not money to spend on a PPL. Groupon, Living Social, ItisOn. We live in a generation of cheap deals. Be it a restaraunt, hairdresser, concert, flying lesson. Deals negate customer loyalty, companies flock to sell volume, at zero margin.
We on EuroGa, with our SEP’s, our yachts, our flying clubs, this frankly is getting more alien to the guy in the street. Statistic from the other day. The wealth gap is greater now than Victorian times. 1%, have it all. All of that filters down, and unless you are a successful FTO, offering a variety of training, geared to the military, or Commercial, I feel GA as we know it, will be dead. GA starts with your PPL, and if there is no spare money around to entice individuals into the field of flying, then it is a tough mountain to climb.
On that cheery note…….
I think making a flight “count” can be anything – whatever does the job. The important thing is to focus on what does the job.
I see a good number of pilots who regularly come to our meet-ups, both the bigger ones and the little ad-hoc ones. There is a lot of value in those trips and I think for quite a few of the pilots the EuroGA fly-in is their biggest trip of the year.
Back to the PPL decline subject, I heard an interesting “statistic” during a board meeting today in that there is a decline in the number of people (in the UK) getting drivers licences as those who live in the cities cannot afford to own/lease/park and why bother when uber is around?
That’s been the case for decades in the (mostly) young community that enjoys living in London. I used to know some of them and most avoided ever travelling outside London – the social life was simply dead anywhere outside Those on really good incomes got nice houses and cars and some of those do fly GA. Maybe this no-car trend is spreading to other large cities now, due to crazy traffic. But I wonder if many of these people would have ever become private pilots. You need the income and you need the free time. I trained with some of them and almost all dropped out immediately they got the PPL, to move to their next “life challenge”.
My view, and I appear to get continually browbeaten when I mention it, is that this is the proverbial, Elephant in the Room.
Brexit, Trump, government spin and lies, China, constant war, the salient fact, is that, people do not have any money
I don’t think you get browbeaten by anybody here on this or anything else
Of course finances are a key factor. No money = no flying… simple as that.
But to say 1% have money and thus 99% don’t have anything is obviously not the case. Stand next to [your nearest M-road] and do a survey of the cars. Stick a rough value on each one. Plot the graph. Note that most of the 50k+ ones are not company cars (not in UK’s company car taxation regime). The “middle class” has an awful lot of money, in much of N Europe at least. S Europe had loads of €€€ poured into it but most of that (well, the part which didn’t get spent on Porsche Cayennes) didn’t “stick”.
The problem is, and always has been, that by the time most people get their hands on some £££ they have other commitments which soak it up.
And those who have £££ for a useful number of years before they get into big commitments (and the high earners are mostly men) are spending their time where there is “good scenery” which there is very little of in GA 
I can think of just one high earning Aston Martin driving 30s guy with “disposable girlfriends” who was heavily into GA, and when he got himself spliced that more or less came to an end, and he was grumpy as hell for years. He is back in, AFAIK, in a limited way.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
There is no good reason why airplane certification for light airplanes up to 2 tons or so has to be so extremely expensive, as it was not so before and has only become so due to unrealistic and bureaucratic requirements.
That is exactly what certification is: bureaucratic requirements. Military aircraft aren’t certified, they are only built according to (military) specifications. Those specifications does not exactly make aircraft cheap, but they make aircraft highly modifiable without undue bureaucracy. The specifications themselves will spark development and research to find new and better ways to meet the specifications. Certification does the exact opposite. Certification is a bureaucratic requirement to show that a piece of aircraft is designed and built according to an already made “recipe”. You cannot use new and better ways to meet a certification, the way a piece of aircraft is made is frozen, set in stone. Only the biggest of the biggest are able to change certifications, Boeing and Airbus typically. Cirrus and Lancair (TTX) would never have existed in certified form, if it wasn’t for a NASA research program, sparked off, and payed for entirely by NASA to get GA into the 20’st century (new materials mostly).
What is needed is a method of showing airworthiness without certification. Experimentals use one method today. The method is simply a test program for 20-50 h on each individual aircraft, and also sign off on the build process. This has shown to work just perfectly, but is perhaps not very practical for factory built aircraft. For factory built aircraft, you can have specifications, or standards. LSA is an example of this, at least the US LSA. A standard is a document specifying the performance, but a standard shall not specify how that performance is achieved. Certification goes one step further. It specifies the performance, but also how that performance is achieved (roughly speaking). This is good for airliners and medical equipment, where safety is of the highest importance and where there are tons of money to pay for it. For private GA, (technical) safety is not of the highest importance, and there are not enough money to pay for it in any case. For private GA, safety is 70% in the head of the PIC, and the only way to increase safety is for each individual PIC to fly more, and to get new and better aircraft out there. The cost has to go down. Certification has to be replaced with industry standards and specifications.
For gliders, all gliders have to be recoverable from a spin, and all glider pilots have to be able to initiate a spin and to recover from a spin. Why not do the same for private GA? it would save lots of lives each year. Another specification could be that all (new) private GA aircraft had a BRS, in the same way that glider pilots have to wear a chute. If those were the only specifications, it would be better than the certification nonsense we have today IMO.
Peter wrote:
I don’t think you get browbeaten by anybody here on this or anything else
Sorry, I should have qualified – present company accepted. I tend not o get browbeaten on internet forums, although, as always, Peter, this is a ‘nice’, environment, (EuroGa).
All my friends on 250k p/a it should have read….
Channel 4, Its only Money, last year, gave an accurate portrayal of the State of the Nation.
Certainly in Scotland, this is the picture. Indeed, No money=No flying.
