Peter wrote:
A lot of people have simply dropped out. Not selling up (yet) – just dropped out.
Hot summer weather has had ten times the effect in my area, best to fly early in the day to be comfortable and I’m not a morning person on the weekends so my flying has been affected by the weather. I don’t know anybody whose flying or aircraft ownership has been affected by COVID but I also don’t know any pilots who lack personal assets to that degree. GA demographics being what they are, probably half of them are retired and don’t work anyway. For the others, mostly time is the bigger issue which would say if they weren’t working as much, with all else equal they’d likely be flying more.
My A&P IA friend is a turbine engine tech rep for his ‘real job’ and his business travel has been affected, his company doesn’t want him flying commercial for the moment. He’s mostly been working by phone and e-mail out of his hangar… which has led to a complete rebuild of one of his own aircraft, I assume while still getting paid. The panel is gone, the interior and controls competely removed, all to be redone from paint up. They still have their C180 to fly, so it’s a good opportunity,
Peter wrote:
On a different angle, I am getting a very strong impression that this has destroyed the livelihoods of a lot of private pilots.
At least in our club, this certainly hasn’t materialized (at least not yet). We’ve had a couple of people leave because they lost their jobs, but have had no problems to fill their slots. In fact, our fleet is currently flying more than ever., our ops hours are at an all-time high. We added another airplane just as Covid hit and were a bit worried about utilization – we needn’t have been, it flies its wings off. There were only two noticeable effects of Covid on our flying:
- during the stay at home order we, in line with the flight schools at our base, did not allow training (not that it mattered – none of our instructors was willing to train)
- some of our older members ( 65+) have scaled back their general exposure to the world and didn’t fly for a while. They are gradually coming back now.
Of course the pandemic hasn’t run it’s course yet and prob90 will not have done so for quite some time, so we’ll have to wait and see if there is a long-term impact on our operations. Given the evidence so far, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
172driver wrote:
during the stay at home order we, in line with the flight schools at our base, did not allow training (not that it mattered – none of our instructors was willing to train)
Here is the latest August 21st re-issue of the California Stay at Home Order, current today, four days after issue. As exemplified by your use of the past tense it is being completely ignored, although the Governor clearly does not want to discuss that the state is in unanimous civil disobedience, and has its own ideas. It must be frustrating for King New-Speak 
Did I read that they’re cutting off power, water and utilities to people in california if they have a gathering in their homes?
I’m noticing the roads are getting significantly busier, but I think the skies over the lakes seem quieter than usual. I’m not sure if this is people flying more short locals rather than other trips / visits. Or the schools which do a lot of sightseeing lessons are not nearly as active.
Off_Field wrote:
Did I read that they’re cutting off power, water and utilities to people in california if they have a gathering in their homes?
Who is “they”? Those items are all under local control by hundreds of independent agencies within the state. Sounds ridiculous to me, although the press is boundless in its silly reporting and ideology.
Local authoritarian control, unsupported by law, by one city official against one highly visible household in a childish, symbolic gesture. However it is another reason to stay away from Smell-A 
There are many such reasons to avoid LA LA Land, but brainless politicians publicizing very typical Hollywood idiots is certainly one of them. I wonder how much money the publicity made for the guy?
The areas of LA County which are actually a disease transmission problem are those with low income where people live together full time in high density housing, encouraged by the stay at home order. The problem is not gatherings in Hollywood, because very likely nobody at those gatherings has spent a lot of time trapped at home in Boyle Heights by law, with fourteen non-English speaking relatives in close proximity.
Its just not feasible to totally shut down the economy for a month – you would end up with a immediate death rate exceeding that from the virus itself.
The number of “essential workers” to keep the basics of life running is very large.
We do still want running drinkable water I take it ’cos without it you are not going to live more than a week. So you need the water treatment works and the suppliers of the materials to them working, that means the tanker drivers so you need fuel supplies all to be operational for the tankers.
We do still want the hospitals to be working – and they will be using an enormous amount of daily consumables. Oxygen being one of them so you want the O2 plants working and all the workers for them working: and the rest.
That means you need the transport infrastructure for all these people to get to work all up and running whether that is public transport or roads.
Same goes for food production and distribution to the supermarkets
……and so and so on.
Already in the UK we are seeing estimates of the deaths caused as a byproduct of the lock downs
Estimated at the moment for every 3 deaths from CV19 the lockdown caused another 2 deaths and long term an estimated up to 200,000 extra deaths are forecast by such things as late diagnosis of cancers.
Yes; some tens of % of the UK workforce are “key workers” by any reasonable definition, especially if one works with the (reasonable) assumption that the human civilisation is just one lunch away from anarchy
some tens of % of the UK workforce are “key workers”
In Scotland it’s at least half of the workforce, i.e. about a quarter of the population.
