GA activity and its decline

Arne wrote:

Same as @mh around here, if the amount of students around the clubs in Skåne is any indication, we might turn that staple up next year.

That’s true. The number of students at my club has been steadily increasing the last two years.

Look at the CAA statistics. The number of licences issued in 2015 was just 25% of the number issued in 1994. A 75% reduction in just 21 years and that is across the board not just PPLs. I don’t think any of the ridiculous over regulation from Bonn is likely to change any trends; the direction is downwards and accelerating.

Well when the general consensus is that you have to be rich to fly let alone own is this an unexpectant outcome?

C210_Flyer wrote:

Well when the general consensus is that you have to be rich to fly let alone own is this an unexpectant outcome?

I do not think this is a general consensus at all. You have to be rich to fly a biz jet or a turbine helicopter, that is the objective truth. I think the general consensus is more that it is complicated, lots and lots of bureaucracy and regulations, and in general exclusively something for professionals. Like other complicated professions, there are no easy way. To become a brain surgeon takes years, and is only for the best of the best. You cannot be an amateur brain surgeon for instance. A pilot is nothing like a brain surgeon of course, but the general consensus is a real pilot is a professional pilot. Anything less is in the “amateur brain surgeon” category. Even among private pilots you can see the exact same consensus wrt microlight and experimentals. Building a plane is only for slightly nutty people. The technical aspects like building, maintaining an aircraft, are best left for the professionals and so on. The consensus is that a average PPL pilot is not technically adept enough to do this, and if he is, he would be better off using that time flying instead of building. The exact same logics can be used to flying you own aircraft vs using public airlines.

I hear this a lot when I tell people I build planes myself. Are you allowed to to that? Who gives you permission to do it? Is it safe?

In effect, a PPL is seen as a useless and nutty thing. Why take a PPL when you can take a CPL/ATPL and become a real pilot? Why fly your own tiny little aircraft that is slow and cramped, when you can fly in an airline, take a drink and relax, and get there much faster?

But this IS changing now. More and more for each year, the general consensus changes toward private aircraft being a recreational thing, much like boating, or traveling on the roads with a mobile home/van, taking trips on an MC and stuff like that, sports, competitions. That is something all people can relate to. This is also my “beef” against EuroGA (not much a beef, more like a little irritation from time to time), it’s stuck in the 70s regarding consensus of what a private pilot is, of what GA is, modern GA.

A “professional” modern GA pilot is one that fly his TMG or microlight, VFR from Lyon to the North Cape and back. A “professional” GA pilot is one who arranges fly ins for experimentals and vintage aircraft. It’s one who fly aerobatcs, one who build his own planes. One that engages in making good flying clubs. It’s also one that show his finger to EASA and all that nonsense. In many ways the LAA is a good representation of modern GA, only in a strange UK kind of way.

I think Joe Public has always felt that you have to be rich to be a pilot. Disposable income is dropping for younger people and costs are rising so it really is more expensive. However I can’t see that the general perception will have changed all that much.

In effect, a PPL is seen as a useless and nutty thing. Why take a PPL when you can take a CPL/ATPL and become a real pilot? Why fly your own tiny little aircraft that is slow and cramped, when you can fly in an airline, take a drink and relax, and get there much faster?

A PPL is undeniably an useless and nutty thing.

I think that it is all best taken in context. As I understand it, PPLs are declining everywhere, although it appears that there is a slight uptick (in the USA and reported in the thread above) in the student pilot populations. Unfortunately, this is not enough to offset the retirement of the bulk of pilots which are older.

I don’t think a PPL is a useless and nutty thing, at least in North America. My wife and I had many great trips touring around the Pacific Northwest and in the future I look forward to a great many more trips. Her parents live on an island which is a 15 minute flight, or a two hour ferry (plus 45 minutes of waiting/traffic on either end). I can’t count the number of times we have flown to visit and the utility of the aircraft was very high. I also quite enjoy looking out the window at the world :-)! What a fantastic way to get around!

I was also fortunate to fly for work (when the weather was nice). My schedule is not that precisely fixed and I can work remotely if I have to delay the return. This was fantastic, and again very useful. The time saved by flying myself (I am a consultant who bills by the hour) more than offset the cost of the aircraft. My clients save money, and I get free flying :-).

As long as people can see these types of benefits, then they might decide to go ahead and get the license! We should thus encourage pretty much anything that increases the utility, decreases the cost of flying, or increases the pleasure of the experience.

Now that I live in London (a minimum of an hour from any of the airfields), it is almost always faster/cheaper more convenient to take the train, fly by the airlines, etc. This is really great for most people who use these services, but is not helpful when trying to convince someone to take up flying…

Also, the bureaucracy is not particularly helpful. I have a colleague, whom I have taken flying, who is keen to get his license. I hope he does it, to increase the pilot population :-), but it will have to be for the love of flight and not utility! I was trying to help him get started and was shocked at how much bureaucracy there is to get a PPL in the UK. For example there are NINE exams and of course a book to go with each of the NINE exams. In Canada (and in the USA as I understand it), there is ONE exam and ONE book to go with it. I have reviewed both sets of material (the UK and Canada) and they cover the same information, so WTF is with the UK? Returning to my colleague, I have trouble recommending to him with straight face that he should buy NINE books and take NINE exams (presumably over 9 weekends?) to get a license which will allow him to bimble around for the love of flight… He has MSc in an engineering discipline, surely he could read one comprehensive book and write one comprehensive exam and be done with it?

This leads me to come around to the thought that perhaps it is a nutty pursuit, but only in the UK (or other highly regulated and expensive jurisdictions)? How can we combat this? Perhaps we should consider that flying can be as complex as you want it to be, or as easy as you make it. In WWII and after, I understand most militaries had to make the acceptance criteria for pilots difficult to keep out the masses (and arguably military pilots should be the cream of the crop); but lets face it, a modern training aircraft pretty much flies itself. Are we mixing up these two criteria; keep it complex to make sure everyone is super technical and few bother to do it, or make it easier and gain access to more pilots?

I haven’t tried, but I bet on a calm day with the trim set correctly, you can add power and the aircraft will take off. Start turning left and reduce power when you are abeam the numbers, keep turning left and you will land… this is not rocket science (as much as we all like to believe we have mastered some complex craft). Pilots are often A-types and techie people, so we enjoy digging deep into many different aspects and details. This is interesting and challenging, but it is probably not appropriate to all aspects of flight. Perhaps then we should stop reinforcing this self imposed complexity on newcomers. When people fly with me the first time, I always let them have a go. They usually ask if it is hard to fly… I usually tell them that it is about as hard as keeping a car between the lines on a motorway (i.e. not hard). They typically do pretty well!

Recently, I was quite impressed at the change in the UK to allow training on permit aircraft. This should definitely help, you can probably buy a permit aircraft for the price of your licence on a rented PA28 from a school.

Despite the long post… I think we should keep moving forward to creating ‘eco-systems’ where it is easy for people to access an airfield, straightforward to get their training, and the flying is fun and inexpensive! You can move on from this starting point to whichever aspect of aviation suits your own preferences and then add as much complexity or cost as you like !

Does anyone know what the ratio is of student future ATPLs Vs PPLs for GA ?

Seems to me that the recent up-tick in student starts is being fueled by future ATPLs and that does little for GA at large, although there is a pretty significant percentage of ATPLs that WILL fly GA for fun.

Here (KSMO, Los Angeles) there are loads of young people of both sexes learning to fly. While I don’t know the ratio of career vs flying-for-fun pilots, anecdotal evidence suggests many just want to learn to fly. How much this translates into a stabilization or even uptick in the PPL population I don’t know, given the huge numbers of baby boomer pilots who will hang up the headset over the next few years.