tschnell wrote:
Well, looking at our school, the LAPL seems especially appealing to “older” students: The medical requirements (both initial and recurrent) are less stringent, and these people rarely have the ambition to move on to IR/CPL. Most of the younger students go straight for the PPL
Yes, It’s the same here. The younger people also has something the older don’t: ambitions 
(easily “helped” along by instructors). The fact is though, of all the PPL holders in Europe, at least for 95% LAPL would be enough for every single hour of their flying. But things are changing. Only a few years ago, no one was taking LAPL. All the LAPL licenses were old PPL licenses converted due to simpler medicals. (which today is rendered almost irrelevant, since we can fly on the LAPL privileges the “second” year). Today people are taking LAPL everywhere, even though the majority are the ones old enough to resist resist the “sweet talking” of PPL by instructors and older PPL/CPL holders.
tschnell wrote:
the simulator would need to be a simulator in the sense that it replicates the actual training aircraft, its panel layout, avionics etc
I think that’s a myth. Training, at least PPL, is very much procedural today. You don’t need to train procedures, you need to know them, memorize them. This can easily be done in sims (but is not usually part of any “simming”). There is also a focus on using written check lists, a complete waste of time and focus when flying only one or two planes. Students should memorize check lists for their training aircraft, visualize them in their heads with respect to the actual cockpit, which also could be done in sims, but is also not part of any “simming” today (can also be done with a simple cardboard drawing of the cockpit). Talking to ATC – sims, and this IS part of at least X-Plane etc and works really well. Getting rid of all this, what is left is basic practical flying skills. This can also be done in PC sims, but not 100%, maybe only 50% or thereabout? With this, I think a 20 year old will be up to PPL level skills in less than 5 hours, and less than 10 hours on a more general basis.
Today, all this is done in the cockpit, and therefore we use 45h instead of 5-10. On the other hand, a good PC for flightsim costs at least €1-2k (and the sky is the limit), and it takes lots of hours just to set up all the configurations alone. In total hours, it would probably be more in the 450h range instead of 45h. It’s probably not worth the time and money if starting from scratch and PPL is the goal. Bur I am convinced that people already into flight simming could get by with 5, max 10h hours if they focus their simming towards PPL.
But then again, as I said initially, 45h is merely a week of work. It really is peanuts in the course of a lifetime. It’s also a great experience all by itself, and for most PPL pilots it’s enough flying experience in their lives. Let’s not forget about that either. Hence, early non-realistic ambitions greatly overshadow the real future course of events for the majority of PPL students. Older people know themselves a bit more, and can make more realistic choices, whether it is LAPL only or further up the ladder (but they habe to work much harder for it )
