Maybe it had something to do with the end of the cold war? I don’t know how it was for GA during the cold war, but I can imagine some unpleasant restrictions were in place.
Peter wrote:
CH was always “rich”, surely?
In a manner of speaking I guess we were. See the prices and salaries quoted above.
However, you had to know how to live on those salaries to make things like flying happen. But yes, I think we were privileged. But much more than that, it was the attitude which was very different than today.
Even though some of the bloodiest battles of anti-nois folks vs airports were fought then, leaving people killed in it’s wake. But generally, the attitude towards flying and airplane ownership was definitly not one where people felt the need to almost excuse themselves for being in this dirty industry, as today.
Also, if you see that today airports don’t find people to work for them anymore: Ground staff here is paid still about the same money as then! But with prices being 300% higher. Hence, we see airports like ZRH in big crisis as nobody wants to work those jobs anymore.
So maybe yes, Switzerland WAS rich at the time. It is not rich now, at least not the average workerbee. Their quality of life and their economical potential has been continuously slashed.
I am not complaing for myself, I am quite happy with my salary. But also my salary has not kept up with inflation, not even nearly. I earn more, also with age, but prices have gone up way over that.
In 2001 I bought my house. It’s price has trippled since then, even though by Swiss standards it’s a shoebox of less than 60 m2 net living space. I would not be able to buy a house today, no way. I am not able to buy a new car actually, them costing 40-60k. I am still (just) able to keep my 60 year old plane and my 30 year old car going.
RikB wrote:
I don’t know how it was for GA during the cold war, but I can imagine some unpleasant restrictions were in place.
Not in Western Europe. You could fly pretty much anywhere.
Clearly you could not fly to Eastern Europe, but nobody wanted to either.
RikB wrote:
Maybe it had something to do with the end of the cold war? I don’t know how it was for GA during the cold war, but I can imagine some unpleasant restrictions were in place.
Yes very likely even in western Europe
Emir wrote:
They became rich
That would be more visible in other stuff like sports cars or cruising boats (I mean lake cruise boats 
)
RikB wrote:
Maybe it had something to do with the end of the cold war? I don’t know how it was for GA during the cold war, but I can imagine some unpleasant restrictions were in place.
Ibra wrote:
Yes very likely even in western Europe
I started flying in 1983. While the cold war lasted I flew to every country in continental Western Europe, to the UK, to Finland and in Scandinavia. Except for a semi-restricted zone nearest to the border with the east bloc (ADIZ – Air Defence Identification Zone), there were no cold war-motivated restrictions.
For enjoyment sake the only ting we can do is to enjoy the things we can enjoy. The things that were enjoyable before, but are no longer so due to restrictions, regulation and cost, well – don’t try to do them.
At the same time, there are lots of things that are plenty of fun. This weekend I flew to a fly-in. It was great. Flying back, a pilot buddy and I flew in formation. Then we landed on his private field: 280 m, on a hill, restrictions in all directions due to terrain and power lines. One of the coolest places I have landed at. And it’s not even far from here. No regulations, no bureaucracy. We stayed on local frequency all the way talking to each other.
When I continued back home, I contacted ATC for information. The ATC could inform me of two other unidentified planes operating in the same area
LeSving wrote:
The things that were enjoyable before, but are no longer so due to restrictions, regulation and cost, well – don’t try to do them.
Somehow I don’t agree with this. The fact that bureaucracy and politics keep taking away freedoms as a long term policy, which results in the decline in many things which used to be enjoyable but are no longer possible due to repressive measures as we face them in GA (outpricing, PPR, overregulation) should not simply be accepted as “God given” but questioned.
For me there is no reason whatsoever that GA should be so heavily discriminated and openly exterminated out of pure spite and long held grudges by those who are in power to run airports. The current trend towards handling, PPR, outpricing is a political will of GA’s opponents, not a necessity.
It’s all very well if you still find enough stuff to do. Well, so do I. But why should I just accept that most airports I regularly used to fly to are today off limits just because some bean counters decide so?
The question was, why there was such a boom in GA in that time period and all I wanted to do is to give a perspective how I experienced these times. There are many life events i never would like to revisit, but in the aviation world, things were a lot better then, to this statement I stand. Hence the decline we see today.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
but in the aviation world, things were a lot better then
I got my PPL in 1992. Things definitely were much easier. Fuel everywhere on trucks that came to the aircraft, all airports were open 24/7, no security, no fences. It started going downhill for real around 2000 perhaps (hard to pinpoint a date here, my activity was also a bit on/off at that time ) The way it used to be for longer tip, was to visit the “C” office for weather, notam, FP, then just go. Nothing more to think about. Today the flying itself is much easier with SD. It’s all the other “stuff”. Where to get fuel (if available at all), opening hours, security cards. I once got locked up inside the terminal (the winding door let people in, but not out, and it was outside opening hours).
What used to be simple, is now a whole bunch of irritating stuff that is of no help, but cost time and money. “Off grid” it’s another matter entirely. It’s getting better and better IMO. Lots of it is a bit “jungle telegraph” kind of thing, but nothing that social media won’t fix. It’s a different world, but it’s more similar to what things used to be, than how things are now compared with how it used to be.
In the 80s and 90s, Western European post war private incomes had risen to the point where flying was possible for a reasonable number of people and in many places GA could utilize the infrastructure already established for the airlines. However I think that because that hadn’t been the case for a long time, GA had yet to capture the attention of those in Europe who pathologically (boosting their own narrow short term interests) over complicate and tax any activity, whether justified or not, unless there are really substantial mass politics to prevent it. This tendency varies significantly between countries and cultures, but EASA for whatever reason passed on the opportunity to regulate uniformly at an evidence based minimum and at least initially followed an impulse to regulate private GA at a high level of complexity. Also climate politics has kicked in, and its attempts to limit and tax behavior with religious style fervor, whether rational or not. More of the same, pushing people financially back into ‘approved’ mainstream behavior and in the process empowering those in the system, versus those using the system.
I remember the 90’s fondly @Silvaire, plenty of cheap access to airline capable airports, AvGas quite available and even a 160 knot piston aircraft was a reasonable proposition as lo cost airlines hadn’t yet become as widespread as today.
When you could buy a year’s commuting from Bergamo to London for around €100 on Ryanair it sort of took the shine off the ‘economics’ of GA.
