This is slightly more recent PPL issue data for the UK
If one extrapolates the obvious trend, how many years before it reach zero on the Y axis?
In reality the numbers will collapse fast at some point, as GA infrastructure disappears.
However in reality a lot of forecasts of doom and gloom don’t come true because mankind has a habit of walking to the edge of the cliff and then doing something about it…
If you take the enormous sums that are being poured into autonomous flight:
and into drones, and the current downward trend of GA on the PPL level, mix in the coming battle around airspace use, then it doesn’t take a lot of fantasy to extrapolate this into a complete change in maybe 10 years time, which will mean the end to flying as we practice it at the moment.
Let’s be optimists: drones will need some way of avoiding existing traffic and I’d anticipate they will follow random paths rather than drone airways. Even when drones come to vastly outnumber piloted aircraft I suspect the ability to avoid us will be inherited, and I doubt they’ll require dedicated airspace in the way that CAT does. I anticipate you’ll be able to just fly where you want within unregulated airspace and they’ll scatter around you.
kwlf wrote:
I anticipate you’ll be able to just fly where you want within unregulated airspace and they’ll scatter around you.
I think that will be the day when I won’t climb into an aircraft that has no parachute any more. Having my life depend on some drone developer’s skills to create an avoidance mechanism that works reliably in any case (IMC, GPS outage, electrical interference) and without bugs isn’t really an optimistic scenario for me.
You have to look at that data in a wider context – the number of CPL issues over the same period is up as people have massively shifted from the modular ATPL route to the integrated route, so never step through a PPL. Despite a lot of doom merchants, I think the underlying trend for PPL training and issuing is broadly flat (note I say broadly!) – I think the post PPL issue retention rate is the real problem.
kwlf wrote:
drones will need some way of avoiding existing traffic and I’d anticipate they will follow random paths rather than drone airways.
No way. Drones have the ability to be useful in serving the public, like evacuating people, flying people to hospitals, serving the police, search missions, transporting medicine and other supplies, not to mention serving the media and of course the military. They will do this at a fraction of the cost of GA and much less hassle. As drones get larger (and faster), they will also have to fly higher, it’s just an unavoidable result of scale.
The statistics shows a steady decline in traditional GA aircraft, about 5-10% per year. Old ones are sold off or condemned, and there are no real supply of new ones. Just looked at the number of privately operated/owned aircraft in Norway. There are about 1420 aircraft in total, change from a year back in paranthesis:
FW EASA: 329 (down 8%)
FW Annex II: 91 (down 12 )
FW Exp: 97 (up 7)
Glider: 147 (down 3%)
Glider Exp: 2 (no change)
Heli EASA: 75 (up 7 )
Heli Exp: 13 (up 30)
Balloon: 20 (no change, balloon is EASA for who knows what reason, but there are proper statistics available)
Mikro: 646 (up 91 %, some of it due to lack of data for previous years)
Total: 1420
It is not that long ago (20-30 years) and there used to be 1500-2000 normal category privately owned aircraft, or what today would be EASA + Annex II. There are only 20-30% left. Of those existing EASA aircraft, more than half are 30-40-50 year old Cessnas and Pipers, and are likely to disappear within the next years. What will be left are 100-150 aircraft (DA42, TBM, biz-jets, aircraft that are able to blend in with the commercial traffic. + some Cirruses etc and trainers), or “high profile” aircraft owned by companies mostly and only partially used for private flights.
In any stretch of the imagination private GA is a marginal activity. Mostly a toy/show-off for successful companies, and recreation/hobby for the rest of us. Already there are thousands of drones around, doing real work in Norway alone.
In total though, GA is not really declining all that much. It’s more that it’s being fragmented into sub-groups and it’s changing. Drones are already regulated, and I can’t see technical problems having the sky full of them. It’s the human factor that is the problem here, and the day a PPL pilot flies off limits and crashes into a drone that is bringing medicines/supplies to an accident cite, I wonder what will happen to GA. I don’t think that will happen though. Every aerial object will have a radio beacon always on, or a small radar or something, long before that. It is a bit of a mystery to me the focus on mode-S and ADSB, which requires external information, when it is the relative position between objects that is the only relevant info needed for collision avoidance. These things have since long been available for cars. Even my eUp has this city emergency braking system, that will reduce the damage, and in some cases avoid crashes altogether.
I agree with all of that, but don’t see where we disagree?
In vmc drones should be able to ‘see and avoid’ better than any human pilot and will have to be able to cope with GPS outages. I suspect we will end up carrying radio beacons of some sort as well, but the drones will need the ability to avoid seagulls, if nothing else.
Re #97: where are the corresponding figures for microlight, gliding, hang-gliding, … , in short, all other forms of recreational flying? The trend of the last 10 years or so has been that the PPL IN ITSELF is more expensive than the other forms while offering little more value. The only reason to go for a PPL today is if one wishes to go on into CPL and/or IFR and/or multi-engine – and all of those have always been marginal. For a Sunday afternoon bimble around the village spire, or a 100 € burger, a much more affordable plane and license are sufficient, but those weren’t available 10 years ago; or at least they were less lightly available.
So that graph shows nothing unexpected, but nothing really meaningful either.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
The trend of the last 10 years or so has been that the PPL IN ITSELF is more expensive than the other forms while offering little more value. The only reason to go for a PPL today is if one wishes to go on into CPL and/or IFR and/or multi-engine – and all of those have always been marginal.
I agree 100% – in principle, maybe 50-75% in practice. There is also aerobatics, cool old planes like a vintage Piper Cub, and of course experimentals 
You can start today with microlight, then 15 hours more of instructor time and you have the LAPL, then PPL and further. The thing is, about 90-95 percent of everyone with a PPL today, would be better off with a microlight license, simply because they get to fly a whole bunch more for less – and – will get involved in maintenance the way it was meant to be for light aircraft, done by the owner. Ultimately a more satisfactory experience for the majority, but not for everyone of course.
@LeSving – you think people get a flying license because they want to get involved in maintenance?!?
