I agree; the FAA is quite pro-active.
European CAAs tend to not bother with obvious and well documented illegal flying. Maybe if a particular individual really p1sses them off, but I have not heard of such so it is speculation. But then we have not had videos of a European helicopter pilot getting a “50hr service in 5 mins” from a girl while flying; the US still holds a monopoly on that 
I don’t mean to be overly cynical about these YT channels; if somebody spends their whole day on social media pumping their video channel and GA gains just one more pilot, I am grateful 
I started peter2000.co.uk/aviation for that purpose and later co-started euroga.org and both of these have had man-years of time sunk into them, and extremely successfully too. But as I wrote above these people do have to do a lot of work to get such a profile. They don’t just create a YT video and it magically gain 200k followers!
So what is their motivation? It is not to bring us new pilots. It is $$$$$-money-$$$$$ ! YT moneytisation starts (reportedly) at 1k followers and at 200k followers becomes pretty lucrative.
If you doubt this, go on a book writing course and hear the social media work needed to launch a book. Unless you are a big name writer of course. It’s the way the world is…
I watch a couple of YT channels on the “progress” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and unlike the GA guys, those guys are very open about needing moneytisation, either via YT (which YT tends to suppress for anything “politically controversial”, and amazingly a lot of Europe is pro-Russia) or via Patreon, and in addition they push some products, like the old favourite Atlas VPN (who actually needs that; it is BS for any normal internet use) and even selling fake Scottish peerages
Peter wrote:
European CAAs tend to not bother with obvious and well documented illegal flying.Agreed. Even the most grumpy German CAA officer doesn’t bother about any YT video, which contains illegal ATC recordings. OK, this ATC secrecy thing might be a dead German rule, but also microlight pilots how fly illegally into countries without permits, don’t get punished. And if a pilot flies intended VFR into IMC, it seems nobody wants to prosecute as well.
Something which is also better in Europe
The use of “better” is debatable. The US hits you hard for “illegal VFR” (if supported by witnesses, etc) but then has a much more accessible IR and an airspace structure (Class E down to 1200ft, etc) which makes most “illegal VFR” clearly illegal, whereas here in Europe one can generally argue about it, and IMHO a prosecution is impossible unless the location etc are proven.
It is a reasonable and probably intentional quid pro quo, and European GA would benefit massively from a more accessible US-style IR process.
Paying passengers on private flights with PPL-only pilots
Having been following US GA social media and knowing many US pilots for > 20 years I get the clear feeling that they simply don’t care about cost sharing, whereas Euro GA is often so poor that a flight is not done at all unless it can be cost-shared. So there is little or no pressure in the US to change their strict common purpose rule, whereas if Europe abolished the cost sharing exemption it would be a total disaster, with “aeroclub/rental” GA in certain countries being practically wiped out.
But, many many previous threads on all this, and this is digressing
I don’t currently know anybody in the US (away from the the internet) who rents and if somebody rides in your plane you don’t ask them for money any more than you would in your car. It’s not something we need to discuss.
To me, it is obvious that these YT channels bring people to GA. Whether they carry on until the license and beyond is our problem.
Today, people must be reached by social media. They are unaccessible otherwise. Just look around you in the subway
Bosco, did you do the TOP 10 of European aviation youtubers ?
Frans wrote:
Something which is also better in Europe, compared to the US: Paying passengers on private flights with PPL-only pilots, based on cost sharing. Especially here in Switzerland, there are quite a lot PPL-A pilots offering scenic flights against pretty high fees, from which they earn more than just cost sharing. The Swiss CAA doesn’t seem to care about it.
What about the tax office? And the insurance company, in case something happens?
@Juju. No. For the sake of it, I just considered 200k as a good threshold for the “top” ones. I don’t even watch their videos, usually. Thing is that the videos from any one “creator”, after having watched a few, tend to become very much the same every time.
For me since I started doing IFR type flights across UK & Europe it’s inspired many people viewing on YouTube to do their full IR. For me that’s a great result and hopefully encourages many more to join the club. This gave me great satisfaction in doing so.
It’s a lot of hard work, especially if you have a full-time job and you fly regularly. You build up a huge backlog of content that becomes very difficult to manage. Editing is tedious too, but I do enjoy it and happy to give exposure to an unknown environment.
BA used to do it, before it got political, and they banned any video/pictures below 10000ft without permission from the TC. From when I was crew, a lot of the old school pilots, especially those on long-haul who were around Pre-9/11 miss showcasing their jobs. Other airlines still do it, but they haven’t had disagreements with the company and gone on strike.
Peter wrote:
Are these people bringing people to GA, or just creating clickbait which goes viral?The only way to get these numbers is by going viral. You won’t get 6 digits worth of results from people doing google searches on “how do I learn to fly” or whatever.
But anyway it is a sad fact that many people live their life on youtube.
IO390 wrote:
People like Trent Palmer will have absolutely got new people into aviation. He’s flying a low cost Kitfox into some amazing places and his videos are extremely well made. There are many other such examples.I don’t think it’s good to be overly cynical about the aviation YouTube crowd.
etn wrote:
What about the tax office? And the insurance company, in case something happens?As long as you declare your income correctly after each year, nothing will happen. And if PPL-pilots only do it occasionally, and don’t report to tax offices, I think nothing will happen as well. Note that bank secrecy is also still in place inside Switzerland. Tax offices inside Switzerland don’t get any data from any Swiss bank.
Tax offices inside Switzerland don’t get any data from any Swiss bank.
That’s good because UK tax office gets plenty of data from Swiss banks (employees stealing it and selling it)
And it gets shared with much of Europe.
I’d say much depends on whether the Youtuber is using his real name. Some operations e.g. AirB&B are set up clearly to facilitate tax evasion. Already UK tax (HMRC) are trawling places like Ebay, looking for sellers who have a high transaction count and are thus probably running a trading business. YT will reveal everything if served with a court order, but the tax office can’t just go “fishing”, AFAIK, in a different country.
