UK pilot here – mid-40s, life-long lover of aviation, in a well-paying IT job, 4 days per week, divorced with a 10 year-old child, own a 1/5th share in a C172. Flew about 75h in the last 12 months, which I think is at the upper end of what a lot of people do.
Capital cost of aircraft limits things on one end – a decent C172 is running close to £100k, a C182 (what I’d like next) is £200k, and finding one in good condition is half the challenge! I’m well off, but I don’t really want to tie up more than £50k in an aircraft, so that means a share.
Flight costs are less of an issue – my partner and child do come on trips with me, or I share with another pilot. As a result, some of the flight costs come out of the family holiday budget, but at ~£150/hr all-in it’s still not something I can “just do”.
Time is the final one – with the 10-year-old I have lots of commitments I don’t want to miss. I’ll be 50 by the time she leaves home and my time “frees up”, but even then I have an employer who wants lots of time. I don’t have, nor do I want, a partner who does all the home stuff for me.
My view is that it’s the capital cost that mostly constrains things – people are having to put that money into housing instead, and along with having families later, that delays things by 15 years or so.
I’m just in the process of selling up and packing it in at the moment. For me ownership was 90% hassle which I have no interest in, particularly when paying 5 figures per year for the privilege. I can only imagine the cost and hassle of keeping a 40+ year old SEP in the sky as going one way. All the PPR/PNR stuff and trying to organise any trips with any degree of certainty didn’t help. Even with the IR the freezing level puts a lid on dispatch rate 6-7 months of the year. On balance, I got into flying to go to fun places and after careful consideration, I think it’s a lot more relaxing to do it in an airliner.
Plus sticking the capital cost into investments for 20 years will hopefully make for a nice retirement fund top-up. Maybe some day I’ll build an RV but at present I’m not that bothered.
That’s super-sad to read, Zuutroy. However, knowing the background to it, I am not very surprised.
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.
Yes I think that may be a bigger factor than most would believe. Across Europe, the N-reg route to the IR (I’d say "the N-reg route to owning anything “serious”) has acted as a “safety valve” against the regulatory overload coming from national CAAs and later from Brussels. Now, of course, I know some people will be jumping up and down and accuse me of being “anti European” (a popular anti-EuroGA drum-banging theme I am well aware of, in 1 or 2 places online, run by certain individuals) but it is a fact that when I started 20 years ago, the N-reg route was the default route. Maybe less in some places than others, depending on national/cultural attitude to regulatory compliance, but popular everywhere. And this was all pre-9/11 so pre-TSA. No paperwork. Just take a holiday out there and fly. While you could do training in Europe and even the checkride in Europe (mostly UK but occassionally France, Italy, etc) most people avoided the “Euro checkride” options for reasons well known off-forum. So lots went to the US. David, the EuroGA co-founder, did his FAA stuff on a super efficient flight around the US with a CFII and then a checkride with a DPE in the same school, coming out to be a really proficient pilot – quite unlike most people who do the IR in the FTO-based sausage machine over here where you fly prescriptive routes between the same old few airports. My FAA IR in Arizona, 2006, 2 weeks of hard flying, cost me absolute peanuts – a few k $ including the hotel! One chap I knew (another exemplary drop-out from flying who climbed to the very top of the food chain) did the whole lot including ATP and CFII out there, on easy trips, in a “mom and pop” school.
And unsurprisingly N-reg was the bulk of the private touring community. The CAAs were getting slightly p1ssed off… Brussels was getting more p1ssed off… another story.
What’s changed to hammer this route? 9/11 and TSA was just a small step. The ending of FAA writtens in Europe was a big step; much bigger than most think, due to written exams being a big “logistical” factor which you really want to get out of the way before travelling out there. Then the ending of visiting DPEs (achieved by “means” best kept off-forum) meant a US trip was necessary for all. Recently, US training ceased to be cheap, but money never mattered much to the time-poor cash-rich customers who form/ed most of the touring community (and whose willingness to pay for a “European route fitted around their life” fuelled the dodgy practices over here but that’s another story).
EASA has introduced various small changes to do with maintenance but they are way too small in the big picture, and most of the maintenance business hates them due to the revenue reduction effect. The CBIR conversion route is good but it doesn’t help with the plane.
Those who went N-reg of course stayed N-reg (it would take unusual reasons to change back to Euro reg) but as they retired they were mostly not replaced.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
In the 1990ties I did several trips with my Cessna 150, to Spain, France, often on a whim without much more than standard prep. That is practically impossible now, at least out of Switzerland, you need PPR for almost everything. Looking back at the destinations I flew to, 90% of them are now practicing GA outpricing and slottery / PPR. Yes, I did like to fly to larger airports, such as Geneva, Lyon (Bron), Grenoble St. Geoirs, Vienna, Frankfurt and so on. What did you do? File a flight plan and go. today, it’s a question of weeks of e-mails, phone calls, informing everybody and his dog that you’re coming and so on.
Nowadays one should ‘pick one’s battles’, avoid bigger airports and have a nice and easy way of traveling by selecting smaller fields. This summer I did Mallorca-Monceau (LFGM)-Mengen (EDTM)-Kunovice (LKKU)-Kulmbach (EDQA)-Hilversum (EHHV)-Troyes (LFQB)-Avignon (LFMV)-Mallorca. Just filed a FPL with SD and the first time they heard from me was on the radio 5 miles out. OK, I lie, LKKU took one email which they responded to within one hour, and LFMV took one phone call. I noticed there was a 24 PPR for parking and was late, so called them and got a ‘no problem sir, we’ll accommodate you’. 
Winston wrote:
My view is that it’s the capital cost that mostly constrains things – people are having to put that money into housing instead, and along with having families later, that delays things by 15 years or so.
Agree. We bought our house last year (I’m 36) and it guzzled up all the capital I had. I can afford to spend 1000€/month on flying each month, which I think is a lot, but buying a suitable SEP would take several years worth of that expense in capital costs alone, without a single drop of avgas or any maintenance done.
I would absolutely love to own an aircraft but it’s not financially viable for me at this point in my life.
aart wrote:
Nowadays one should ‘pick one’s battles’, avoid bigger airports and have a nice and easy way of traveling by selecting smaller fields.
That is what it amounts to. Unfortunately that often also means the IFR capability goes away with that, as most small airfields do not have IFR. Also this means quite a lot of previously great destinations are no longer accessible.
I guess the ultimate direction things should go would be smaller airfields becoming the GA infrastructure they are in the US, but that would mean a lot of cutting of red tape and night/IFR for those airfields to be serious contenders.
Well, for me it’s at best another 10 years or so (I am 60 in december) so I’ll try to make the best of it. I reckon my homebase will move to either LSZK or LSZF.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
as most small airfields do not have IFR
Well they do in NCO if you are smart about the limits
They do not have enough distance tough for takeoff with bags 
Emir wrote:
Yesterday I landed to Roskilde EKRK and I was amazed with quantity of traffic there – more than on Croatian CAT airports. Although the majority were training flights there was a lot of other GA traffic as well. Two perpendicular runways, ILS approach on each runway, RNP approaches, low fees, lots of parking place, no PPR (just 1 hour PN for international flights for which is sufficient to submit flight plan what you would do anyway) – it looks like GA paradise to me. Not that it proves anything but it would be nice to get feedback from Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Poland etc. to check whether GA is in decline.
Hope you enjoyed your stay in DK? Yes we are fairly lucky at EKRK and Denmark in general. Only airport to stay away from in small GA is Copenhagen EKCH which is almost all CAT and high fees. But EKRK was set up for that very reason when GA was moved away from EKCH in the 70s. But that required regulations and planning and not just not leave things entirely to the airport management, but rather recognize that they indeed (at least partially) run a monopoly business that need a critical eye. Greece comes to mind as the worst example but other counties and airports are also pricing out GA without providing alternatives.
Anyway I pulled some statistics for EKRK. Operations per year:
2021: 75278
2020:81190
2019: 74209
2018: 81681
2017: 73180
2016: 70978
2015: 67263
That does not really look like a decline to me.
That does not really look like a decline to me.
Indeed, but the topic is different
Of which international operations:
2021: 4010
2020: 3127
2019: 3725
2018: 3615
2017: 3163
2016: 3087
2015: 3267
