Rwy20 wrote:
Having a higher percentage of the population living in big cities automatically means that less of them will have access to convenient, small airports with enough of the freedom (i.e. no class B or C airspace close by) that Silvaire is talking about
The access comes from the air above 
I actually fly from an airport in a highly populated area with 600 movements per day on three runways, in Class D airspace underneath Class B airspace. However, it only takes about 10 minutes by air to get to uniformly Class E airspace, up to 18,000 ft, so airport and airspace issues are no big deal for me. After receiving takeoff clearance I’m often finished making outbound radio calls, and there are lots of places to fly nearby that aren’t congested like home base.
People chasing money to growing urban areas is a force for light aircraft and small rural airports, not against… assuming enough individuals have the imagination to know that something exists outside of the city, which may be an issue. For pilots I think one of the objectives of flying if you’re based in a place like KSMO is to be able to get out quickly, and go somewhere different if only for lunch. The US has a relatively low population density overall so even if based someplace very urban like Santa Monica, you aren’t that far from small airports under Class E airspace.
I think the biggest issue for US flying is the weather where you live, and also in this case the trend should be supportive: people are moving away from rural areas with poor flying weather to wealthier urban areas with busy GA airports, good flying weather and the prospect of a long drive out of the city. Certainly if I lived in the Los Angeles basin an airplane would be mandatory!
I certainly don’t need to go to an airport to meet women
I wasn’t suggesting you should but the different social scene is likely to be relevant.
Rwy20 wrote:
I don’t think that Santa Monica is anywhere near representative of what is happening in the rural USA.
Of course it isn’t and you are broadly correct, witness the number of rural communities that have lost their commercial air services over the last few years.
However, you could also turn the argument on its head: if there is a growing student pilot population in a place like Los Angeles that offers pretty much unlimited career choices, doesn’t that speak to the re-found attractiveness of this field?
172driver wrote:
if there is a growing student pilot population in a place like Los Angeles that offers pretty much unlimited career choices, doesn’t that speak to the re-found attractiveness of this field?
That’s great news indeed !!!
Did you ask them what brought them into flying ?
Is it the efforts AOPA and EAA launched a few years ago (Young Eagles …) or is it more the Youtube guys giving a better image of GA ?
Jujupilote wrote:
Did you ask them what brought them into flying ?
Not really, although I know that most of the flight school students want to be career pilots. As I said earlier, this has again become a career worth pursuing after years (decades?) where the freight haulers and the Regionals paid a pittance and the airline jobs were gummed up with Baby Boomers (yes, chaps, that’s us!!). I’ll ask around our club a bit when I next see some of the younger ones.
Aveling wrote:
‘Cost’ is the recurring theme. Some writers even comment on the much greater cost issue in Europe
It’s not so much the cost of learning to fly, which has only slightly outpaced inflation – it’s the cost of everything else, particularly the college education you need to have enough disposable income to learn to fly, saddling millennials with tremendous amounts of debt, which the baby boomers and even Gen-X didn’t get lumbered with. That, coupled with stagnant (or falling) in real terms household incomes for the middle classes.
and one memorably refers to “a millenial generation who can’t put their phones down long enough to learn to fly” Ain’t that the truth.
Nope, it ain’t the truth at all – it’s just a popular trope.
particularly the college education you need to have enough disposable income to learn to fly
I am not sure that is the case for aircraft owners. Most of those I know are people who own their business, and for that you don’t need any education. You just need to be very good at what you are doing which basically means (and always did mean) taking a keen personal interest in the subject. Like some kid who played with electronics since the age of 6 is going to become a really good electronics engineer, regardless of whether he ever goes to college or univ. In fact univ will be a waste of his time since he will know more about electronics upon starting than he will be expected to know upon leaving. Most highly educated people don’t make much money at all and, if they do, it is usually many years later when their PhD or whatever became irrelevant decades beforehand.
I think there is a lot more pressure to do other stuff, and the internet has a lot to do with that, soaking up a lot of peoples’ time. In the old days, if you got bored you got a book to read, or you built radios, etc. There are still kids that do that today but not many.
And there are many barriers to entry in starting a business. Most of technology, the sort where a clever person could make a few M running a small business for 20 years, is dominated by huge players and cannot be entered. Only some B2B niches remain.
The romance of flying is now gone and I think thats plays a fair part of the reduction in PPL holders and I suspect this effects europe as much as the USA.
As for the reat well I blame firmly that the feet of the regulator.
I am still surprised at how resilient grass roots avaiation is: vintage tailwheel, Microlights, Gliding, Aerobatics, operating out of grass airfields/farm strips…but agree the demographics are skewed towards ageing baby boomers.
A fair proportion of the zero to hero crowd regard general aviation as a stepping stone to a jet transport job, and when they reach their goal never want to fly an ‘unsafe’ SEP, let alone MEP, again. Conversely some older airline pilots are seen returning to grass roots and giving tailwheel and aerobatics instruction. Not sure who will pass on grass root skills in the future.
alioth wrote:
It’s not so much the cost of learning to fly, which has only slightly outpaced inflation – it’s the cost of everything else, particularly the college education you need to have enough disposable income to learn to fly, saddling millennials with tremendous amounts of debt, which the baby boomers and even Gen-X didn’t get lumbered with. That, coupled with stagnant (or falling) in real terms household incomes for the middle classes.That would differ very much between countries. The situation in Sweden is certainly not like this. Real term houshold incomes for the middle classes have increased here for at least the past 10 years (which may be the reason why many flying clubs see an increased intake of people wanting to learn to fly). On the other hand the cost of flying a C172 or PA28 in my club is about twice as high in real terms as it was when I started flying in 1983.
