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How many pilots in the world?

Active or valid is well defined. It means you can legally go flying.

Yes, so, back to the start, we need numbers for pilots with valid Class 2 medicals. That should also include retired airline pilots who will describe themselves as “ATPL”, while excluding serving airline pilots.

Serving airline pilots who fly GA will also tend to keep their activity “below the radar” for duty hour limitations reasons.

Based on my 18 years hanging around this scene, I think the vast majority, say 90%, of serving airline pilots would not touch GA with a 20ft bargepole. They have zero interest in it, and especially the lo-co ones, not enough income to fly GA while bankrolling a young family. When my TB20 was for rent, for a few years, many years ago, it was poster-advertised (£80/hr dry, plus VAT) in an Easyjet crew room at Gatwick, and there were zero takers.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Well, I contacted one prominent French pilot who used to post here a lot, who is/was close to the DGAC and the whole establishment, to see if he can get numbers to resolve this “40k question” and he informs me he has stopped flying…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

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?

Well, here you have one.

Kidding aside, after this and this I found the worse time to pass my checkrides. Half a year ago airlines were in a hiring spree and now nobody will touch recently graduated pilots.

Last Edited by Dimme at 02 Nov 08:19
ESME, ESMS

If I remember correctly at the last AGM the FFA reported around 43, 000 licence holders. That is 43, 000 active flying members. This figure is basically PPL’s, Brevet de Base and students. To fly a club plane one generally has to have an FFA licence as this provides some assurance to the flying club as well as insurance to the member (life, invalidity, judicial) as well as a get you home service if for reasons such as breakdown or weather you can’t fly aircraft home after a trip.
On top of this there are many pilot owners who do not need to belong to the FFA. Based on figures I have loosely extrapolated from some of the aerodromes in this area, I estimate this to be around 5000, but could be a lot more, I doubt if it is much less.
I have not included in these figures any estimate of pilots who only fly, commercially or within the military.
The FFPULM give figures of around 30, 000 pilots. Some of these will also be included in the previous figures. At one time I would have thought the percentage of ULM pilots who also hold a PPL to be quite high, however, anecdotally and from my observations this figure has dwindled dramatically over the last few years as the number of ULM only pilots has increased.
I have searched on the Government website for the number of class 2 medicals. I have seen the figure somewhere but can’t seem to find it now.
Of course that would only give part of the picture for number of pilots in France as it would not include Class 1 holders, ULM pilots, or indeed pilots with licences from other countries who reside full time in France and do most of their flying here, but I suppose they should be picked up in other figures.

France

Yes, so, back to the start, we need numbers for pilots with valid Class 2 medicals.

Well. IMO the number of “active” pilots should include the ones that could go flying tomorrow, medical or no medical. Lots of people have valid licenses, since EASA licences are valid for life. If their ratings are expired, they cannot fly even if they have valid medicals.

The only need for this information is to see if we are doing OK as a group, or if we are shrinking every day. I think we are shrinking faster than ever. At least in Norway that seems to be what the numbers are saying. People with a license seems to be as high as ever, but people who also have valid ratings and valid medical are shrinking. The UL scene offsets this to some extent, but not all of it.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Does anybody have link to French CPL-holders statistics?

Czech Republic

DGAC does annual PPT report on anything GA related, try searching for something “presentation OACI DGAC AG”

Try this page 49, roughly 5000 CPL holders vs 30000 pilots under DGAC
http://www.clefi.fr/ressource/PPT-Reg-02-OACI-Europe-DGAC-AG-2018-03-28.pdf local copy

This website has a lot of GA info, unfortunately in French
http://ac.oleron.free.fr/actualites_reglementaires_1579.htm

I wonder what use the number of CPL holders? CPL+ATPL should be a good number?

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Vladimir wrote:

Switzerland: ~8.4k or 0.10%

The official stats of the BAZL for flying staff claims 16974 valid licenses in 2016 of which 4777 are PPL(A), 1083 CPL(A) and 2491 ATPL(A).
So your numbers are quite correct ;-)

As we know, PPL(A) has dropped from 8179 in 1990 (almost down 50%!) and ATPL(A) increased from 886 in 1990 which is 300% up!

Last Edited by Neal at 04 Nov 21:01
LSPG, LSZC, Switzerland

Neal wrote:

16974 valid licenses

It’s actually only 12,272, the other figure also includes special permits (Sonderbewilligungen und Lehrausweise).

Here is another source about Swtizerland in 2017: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/154242/umfrage/anzahl-der-piloten-in-der-schweiz/

LSZH, LSZF, Switzerland

The UK CAA has just released some new data here. These show the total number of license holders. For some reason they have not similarly updated the license issue stats.

Interesting. As posted by various people, almost nobody is doing the LAPL. The NPPL is rising steadily; it is the principal vehicle for the Medical Self Declaration route. The UK national PPL is declining steadily.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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