This heatmap pretty much confirms a lot of what is being said on this forum regarding popularity of GA in different countries. Of course it represents Skydemon usage in the first place, but I think the trend is pretty obvious…
All credits to Skydemon for this image
It’s quite surprising that the north of Italy is so hot and even hotter than central France. Or maybe the French are using a different application?
Also population density would be a factor in the “hotness”.
Yes, the French use SDVFR. That’s why France in underrepresented and the UK is overpresented.
Northern Italy is highly populated, relatively wealthy and there is a lot of GA fling on there. South of the Appenines, it’sna different story.
All in all, resident GA in Europe is essentially Germany/Austria/Switzerland, BeNeLux, England, France and Northern Italy.
It’s quite surprising that the north of Italy is so hot and even hotter than central France. Or maybe the French are using a different application?
Exactly. What strikes me right away is the difference between France and Germany.
Their GA populations are of similar sizes and while mission profiles probably differ significantly (mostly aeroclub flying in the former) I would expect the hours flown to be roughly similar. Probably some numbers here.
The difference will be accounted for by the much greater acceptance of a “British” product in Germany, due to a) very different ELP and b) France being traditionally hard to sell foreign products (of any kind) into.
Re Italy, that has a long history of almost unusable VFR charts (many threads here on that topic), so would have grabbed the first thing that came along – despite this which took years to address 
England is “hot” because that is where SD started, with heavy promotions all over the forums, running for years.
And SDVFR is free.. Flying in France is all about enjoying oneself and keeping the cost down.
Hence so many ULM, so many homebuilts and a great many classic collectors aircraft and so many clubs
The map corresponds perfectly with what I see on ads-b maps.
France is probably under represented indeed. Someone mentioned it also fits the european banana, ie the highest GDP area of Europe.
Yep, SDVFR is free and very efficient for VFR. It doesn’t have all the in-flight warning of FF/SD but nice and map is really nice, very close to the paper map format. Extensively used around here,
It seems that Germans like to stay in Germany. Some Hotspots right beside the border yet at the border there is a sharp drop of traffic.
I am sure that is true for every country – to at least 95% – except possibly Luxembourg
