Does anyone have a good statistic about how many pilots are there in the world, if possible per country and aviation area (e.g. GA vs airlines)?
In Sweden, our Swedish Transport Agency publish some statistics – http://transportstyrelsen.se/sv/luftfart/Statistik/Statistik-over-certifikat/
2757 valid PPL(A) at the moment, which is not a lot. Of the PPL(A), just 350 had an instrument rating in 2013 when I asked the authority about it.
I found some statistics from different years (from 2009 till now) and they are more interesting than I expected. The US has about 600-620k pilots, corresponding to some 0.19% of the population, with Alaska topping the list with 1.3% (http://www.statemaster.com/graph/trn_act_avi_pil_percap-active-aviation-pilots-per-capita). Other countries have these numbers:
Switzerland: ~8.4k or 0.10%
Germany: ~88k or 0.11%
Austria: ~8k or 0.09%
France: ~40k or 0.06%
UK: ~30k or 0.05%
Canada: ~46k or 0.13%
Australia: ~27k or 0.11%
So there are not that many pilots, I expected them to be more. North America (US and Canada) seem to be a bit above the average, while I expect Eastern Europe and Africa to be below.
Another interesting fact is that I could not find any worldwide statistics (with a google search of 10-15 minutes), I had to search per country and the information is neither recent, nor accurate, with the US being the only country I found with detailed data.
One important difference when looking at these stats – in Gemany, Austria and Switzerland, glider and, IIRC, microlight pilots traditionally had pilot licences issued by the authorities, while in Britain these activities were delegated to associations outside the NAA. I believe in France as well.
If the UK and France numbers are missing the glider and/or microlight pilots, this changes – basically US is 0.2%, everybody else is around 0.1%, with Canada a bit higher.
martin-esmi wrote:
2757 valid PPL(A) [in Sweden] at the moment, which is not a lot.
If you add the LAPL(A) and national UL licenses, you get 3566. Adding (private) helicopter and glider licenses brings the figure to 5019, which is still not a lot — about 0,05% of the population.
For “perpetual” licenses like the PPL, only licenses with at least one valid rating are counted. This could make the figures difficult to compare with those of other countries unless you know exactly how the tallies have been made.
And only 6% of all pilots are female
Yes it would be great to do something to increase that.
We get plenty of women on our fly-ins but rarely as pilots, and they enjoy the trip. They just need to get into the LHS 
Airborne_Again wrote:
If you add the LAPL(A) and national UL licenses, you get 3566. Adding (private) helicopter and glider licenses brings the figure to 5019, which is still not a lot — about 0,05% of the population.
This assumes that one pilot doesn’t hold multiple licences – PPL(H). PPL(A) etc…..
Is there any statistics how many EASA pilot licenses issued each year?
That would be an uninformative statistic.
EASA licences issued to newly qualified pilots. Issued to experienced, current, pilots converting from EU National Licence. Issued to pilots who’d allowed the licence to lapse for many years. Issued to foreign licence holders.
