I can’t comment on historical trends, or the UK. But what I see here in France, in 2022, is that (a) ownership is extremely rare, compared to the US at least and (b) flying-to-go-somewhere is pretty rare too, beyond a short-ish flight to somewhere nearby for lunch.
I’ve recently been flying a very nice TB20 owned by a nearby aeroclub. It’s a perfect IFR cross-country touring plane. It COULD be taken away for a weekend somewhere, but in fact it is used exclusively for IFR training and rarely lands anywhere but its home field. (It doesn’t help that there is a landing fee at almost any airport that has instrument approaches, so the latter generally terminate in a go-around).
That club is an exception though. Most clubs have a handful of strictly VFR-only DR400s or PA28s, or lately Rotax-powered LSAs. Even finding an IFR-capable plane in a club is rare, especially one with decent GPS avionics. Finding an instrument instructor is even rarer. What little IFR flying is done at clubs is almost all future airline pilots.
I was just curious as to the reason this thread exists.
It isn’t for advert clicks. We have no advert revenue. EuroGA is donation funded, with a small add-on from the Marketplace.
It is like this thread – a worthwhile discussion, with lots of good data there, and perhaps to see if anything can be done. After all, EuroGA exists to promote GA in Europe! It will never have a commercial value. And a lot of contributors have put in a lot of their time to promote GA, in their own different ways.
Questioning reasons for a decline (whether real or not) is worth doing. Let’s face it: GA is certainly not growing – once you take out the “bucket list” and all the other kinds of temporary activity. If one is running a school/club then any activity is great even if the customer vanishes at PPL+1 day, but this will mask deeper trends which will one day bite us. For example look at who is buying most fuel. Without these people supporting the infrastructure, the whole lot will collapse. But for sure it is a very slow process.
I think it’s the people leaving the forum are the ones that can shed some light here.
I sometimes contact people who left and usually they have basically stopped flying. The young ones (say below 50 
) usually due to pressure of work. The old age pensioners (like me, 65) mostly due to medical, money, and such like. A very tiny number have moved way up (turboprops) and most (not all) of them left GA because there is nothing for them to post anymore; most fly the same mission profile over and over and over again, as I know I would if I got a TP, which is why I haven’t got one
Three observations from the above posts :
Peter wrote:
I sometimes contact people who left and usually they have basically stopped flying. The young ones (say below 50 ) usually due to pressure of work. The old age pensioners (like me, 65) mostly due to medical, money, and such like.
Well, I guess there you have it then. For me, I if I were to stop flying by choice, then it would be an issue of money. That’s the reason I sold my own plane and I am selective in the flights I make. When I fly it is to go ‘touring’ and visit other places. This way I try to make the most of my flying budget and time.
people don’t feel the need to connect to others
That will be a mistake which is pretty fatal in the long term
Jujupilote wrote:
Right now, I see exactly 25 non-military, non-ATO pistons flying above 6000 ft over Europe (I set this threshold to keep only “tourers”).
A bit off-topic, I don’t think there are that many SEP above 6kft in Europe in autumn & winter: 0C isotherm today is 6kft and freezing band is 6kft-14kft with plenty of very wet medium cloud overcasts (7kft-20kft), it’s likely what you see now as traffic are de-iced aircraft, these aircraft are likely to fall under ‘serious tourers’ that can be operated in winter
In theory, one can still fly freestyle IFR in 3kft-6kft band with clean wings in winter (e.g. C172), they need to know what they are doing (e.g. being able to fly approach without procedures, know how to plan airspace, avoid terrain without being on radar and swap flight rules…), in practice, that pilot proportion is very tiny compared to ‘VMC only pilots’ who fly under 3kft or ‘FIKI only pilots’ who fly above FL100
Peter wrote:
That will be a mistake which is pretty fatal in the long term
I agree. There needs to be a support network and people spreading the idea that flying can be a fun, interesting activity. Otherwise it will die out in the medium term.
Ok so what is the outcome here: Do we need more trip reports? Because they attract more pilots to doing such trips?
Good Q.
I wasn’t actually thinking of trip reports as “evidence” of anything. Most people who have done these find them increasingly hard to do. I find that too. I have a couple to write up from 2022 (the fly to ski to Aosta, and the Sicily trip) which I will probably do in the depths of the winter
I was thinking of e.g. this topic. Icing is a controversial and dangerous thing and years ago this would have triggered quite a debate. A bit like this – look at some posts there. I could have added this new thread to the end of that general icing thread but kept it separate because it is specific to rain automatically stopping before you reach the 0C level – which is obviously actually true nearly all the time.
This is quite a good topic for indicating the type of activity I am talking about. Where have these people gone? Some I know are still out there but rarely on social media, a few are out there but not “GA”, quite a few have packed up flying.
And my central thesis is that those who have packed up have not been replaced. We don’t have a lot of new IR pilots coming along.
We don’t have a lot of new IR pilots coming along.
In Europe, that’s hardly surprising. Getting a full IR in Europe seems to be a very serious undertaking including months of full-time study, whereas getting an FAA IR just requires a bunch of enjoyable flying. OK, a bit of study too, but done in the comfort of your own armchair in your free time.
I believe that once upon a time you could take the FAA route while living in Europe, but since there are no more DPEs in Europe, even if you can find an FAA CFII and an N-reg aircraft, you still need to go to the US for a checkride. That all strikes me as highly stressful and complicated.
In contrast, in the US I would say that most serious PPLs – over 50% – go on to do their IR as a matter of course.
