Timothy wrote:
I would have thought that the number of professionals is comparable with the number of active amateurs.
I’m actually pretty sure that the number of commercial pilots is a lot higher than the number of active private pilots. As we all know a vast majority (in the UK the oft-quoted figure is 90%, although I don’t know how accurate that is) give up shortly after getting a license. Or look at clubs, even here in the US: our club has about 60 members and looking at the online scheduling portal I consistently see the same 10-15 people flying.
I’m actually pretty sure that the number of commercial pilots is a lot higher than the number of active private pilots
Well, sure, but that’s a different debate. Look at Capitaine’s 12.5 hours per pilot figure for France. If you set the threshold for “active” at say 50hrs/year, you will get almost nothing for every country in Europe. Nearly the entire aeroclub scene will be zeroed and you will be left with just a few private pilots. And surprisingly a lot of IR holders fly less than 50hrs, especially in the last decade or so of their flying career.
BA alone has 4000
If the UK airlines have say 10k pilots working for them, that makes the UK only about 10k PPLs. That puts a different slant on all this. But then I find it hard to believe France has 40k PPLs (that actually fly at all, legally, etc). I have flown a great deal in France and one would expect to see a lot of planes if it was 4x bigger than the UK. I wonder if the 40k includes a lot of people who are paying subscriptions? It is human nature to not let go, emotionally. Look at all the hangar queen planes…
OTOH I am not sure the 20k UK figure is for all pilots or just PPLs.
Germany has some statistics:
https://www.lba.de/DE/Presse/Statistiken/Statistik_Lizenzen.html (ATPL, CPL, PPL/IR, etc. are handled by the LBA)
https://www.lba.de/DE/Presse/Statistiken/Statistik_LizenzenLandesluftfahrtbeoerden.html?nn=700678 (SPL, PPL/VFR, LAPL, BPL are handled by regional CAA)
https://www.daec.de/fileadmin/user_upload/files/2018/Presse/Aero_Club_News/DAeC_2018_05.pdf Microlights are handled by DAeC/DULV (so there are many duplicats – PPL with microlight licence, etc.)
Peter wrote:
If you set the threshold for “active” at say 50hrs/year, you will get almost nothing for every country in Europe.
Sure, agreed. By active, I meant people who fly at all. I bet we all know some former pilots who still hold a license and perhaps even a medical but haven’t flown in years. I certainly do. Let’s use the EASA 12 hr (?) requirement as a benchmark. I’m pretty sure the number of pilots attaining even that ludicrously low flying hours isn’t very high. Again, I’ve been a member of three flying clubs by now, two in Europe (North and South) and one in the US and in all three the ratio of active pilots (as per my definition above) to sub-paying members was about 1 to 3 or even 4.
So we are back to not knowing much really. One needs the number of valid medicals AND the license is only a PPL. Only a few private pilots have a CPL+.
One can see some issue stats (I posted the UK ones above) but e.g. the UK CAA has always carefully avoided releasing data on how long before pilots give up. Having that data would enable one to infer the “stagnant population” between those two i.e. those who are probably active, but it would also make the PPL training scene look a terrible waste of peoples’ money.
Peter wrote:
Only a few private pilots have a CPL+.
Where does that stat come from? I know a lot of people flying privately with professional licences.
It comes from me.
I do too but they are a small %.
It will depend on what circles one revolves in.
Ask yourself how many masochists there are who would do the 7 PPL exams, 7 IR exams, 13 CPL exams, OR the 7 PPL exams and the 14 ATPL exams, and hang out at an FTO, wearing the uniform and the other stuff, just to fly a private plane?
There are certainly quite a lot of airline pilots, both serving and retired, who fly GA. Most of them fly taildraggers 
Not sure how one would collect those stats. I would put them at 10% of the total. They probably do more hours though, because they usually have money.
In the FAA world, it’s a very different thing. I did the CPL because it was very doable, hassle-wise especially, and just 1 written exam. But we haven’t got to how many private pilots there are in the USA, but we should, because of the thread title.
Peter wrote:
If you set the threshold for “active” at say 50hrs/year, you will get almost nothing for every country in Europe
Why 50, why not 500 ? or 5? Active or valid is well defined. It means you can legally go flying.
Peter wrote:
One needs the number of valid medicals AND the license is only a PPL.
The number of valid class or type ratings is better than the number of valid medicals. You have to actually fly to revalidate a class or type rating. (Well, ok, you might do it in a simulator but I think we can safely assume the number of PPLs who do that and then not fly is essentially zero.)
Well, if we can all make up our own stats…
