GA activity and its decline

LeSving wrote:

I do not think this is a general consensus at all. You have to be rich to fly a biz jet or a turbine helicopter, that is the objective truth.

I guess it depends on the circle you travel in. If in your country club of multimillionaires you dont have a jet or private pilot to fly you around you would be looked down upon.
I travel in coach most of the time because Im cheap. When I translate my personal flying expenses to Commercial carriers I would be traveling in 1 st class.

But the General consensus IS you have to be rich by the average Mario in Italy, or Pierre in France, or Wolfgang in Germany, etc. How do I know because most of the people I know that I have talked to, have told me so. So that is the perception.

Then when someone says hey I liked to learn how to fly and then sees all the absolute Bullsh*t they have to go through to get a license they think twice about it. But then there are the ones that do it anyway just because they like a challenge and have disposable income to do it. Most fly less than 50 hrs a year once they get their license,

To give an example when the price of 100LL doubled in a few yrs in the US there was a significant drop in flying hours by owners. And that is in the US where the avgas price is 50-60% less. Actually everything associated with flying is less.

In order to have practical utility from the plane you and plane should be IFR certified, deiced (mostly in Europe), high performance and of course have mission for flying about 100 hrs a year. Without that and you’ll know why numbers are declining.

LeSving, it’s actually the specification that’s so restrictive. Certification is just a name of the process. It will still be called certification even after the reorganization they’re working on that should make innovation easier and also remove burden from the simpler types (so much so that VLA is supposed to be unnecessary and done away with). And it’s IMHO desirable to have a process in which a manufacturer demonstrates a type meets a given specification. Yes, we could use a better specification and hopefully we’ll get one.

I certainly wouldn’t be interested in that specification of yours. There is much more to a reasonably safe aircraft than that.

I am sorry for the long posting, but I “need” to comment on some of the posts. I try to keep it brief.

C210_Flyer wrote:

What is wrong with sour old men?

It’s not their age, it’s their attitude. It puts people off to hear that they can’t do what they are doing, that they weren’t “right” pilots for using an iPad coming from a guy who is barely able to hold a C172 straight and level and land it on a 2 km runway without damaging it too much. Especially young female pilots are put off if they hear this grumpy-talk about how they can’t fly because they decide to go-around rather than crashing or endangering their passengers by showing their alleged skill. Whenever I hear (and that is quite often the case) that my flight instruction would be bad solely based on the point that our ATO is held by an aero-club instead of a commercial company – not because of the real quality of my instruction – that puts me off and usually this comes from grumpy old men who want things to be like they never were. Or the folks belitteling other people in a manner of “Oh look, he knows nothing about aviation, he has to do preflight planing and writes down courses and times!”. In my experience younger folks are much more open to things and people and know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Often you will find normal old people, but most grumpy and idiotic comments come from sour old men. And these are in my experience the biggest factors of why people don’t start or even quit aviation.

Tumbleweed wrote:

I don’t think any of the ridiculous over regulation from Bonn is likely to change any trends; the direction is downwards and accelerating.

First of all, EASA is located in Cologne, and then I still have to meet a single person who quit flying due to EASA rules. Most new pilot’s wouldn’t even get the idea, if they wouldn’t hear constant moaning by people who in my experience often didn’t read or didn’t understand the regulations in the first place. It is a popular sport to blame anything on EASA, even if the national authorities are the real culprit here. In the most cases EASA gets the blame for something the NAAs have botched up.

I took the opportunity to look at the CAA sttistics, I would like to have that good data in Germany. But here is what it shows for PPL and LAPL licenses, and as they said only with valid med. Cert:

I think that settles the notion of declining pilot population in UK, doesn’t it? granted, in 1999 it has been on a high of 30961 licenses, but I can’t see the vast decline that has been claimed in these figures. (Sailplanes, TMG, Microlicghts are not considered, aswell as the ATPL/CPL holders, Helicopters, Baloons and Airships). The initial issue of PPL has dropped from 3600 in 1994 to 2480 in 2015/2016. that is a drop of 30%, not 75%. But is has been at 4289 in 2014/2015, that would be a rise by 19% in comparison to 1994.

LeSving wrote:

I think the general consensus is more that it is complicated, lots and lots of bureaucracy and regulations, and in general exclusively something for professionals.

Actually, no. While it is true that many people are not aware of what you are allowed to do, bureaucracy isn’t very dominant in this respect, as it isn’t in real life (e.g. a LAPL holder has to have a valid medical and a signature from the FI all 2 years and that’s pretty much all bureaucracy involved in flying. For a PPL-holder the FI has to send in a sheet of paper and a copy of the license and then that’s all. Gone are the days of sending certified copies and signed forms to the local NAA branch and being grounded until the new license is back… )

Most people who come and are interested in flying have no idea about the costs and about what is necessary and are very open minded about how all things work. And unless you don’t go and moan about how eeeeevil EASA would be, they usually don’t care at all, because flying is what they desire and not listening to moaning about things they don’t have an influence on anyway.

LeSving wrote:

In effect, a PPL is seen as a useless and nutty thing.

I never crossed that notion, and not more than a motorbike-licence anyway. Since the operating scope is so small the microlight license is often claimed to be useless as in no practical transportation use, but that is definitely not the case for the PPL here around. So you can’t make a general issue about this.

LeSving wrote:

This is also my “beef” against EuroGA (not much a beef, more like a little irritation from time to time), it’s stuck in the 70s regarding consensus of what a private pilot is, of what GA is, modern GA.

That is, of course, nonsense. First of all, it is not stuck in the 70s to use the aircraft as a travelling tool because many people like to travel and the aircraft opens them opportunities no other transport vehicle can. But even if it’s not the case, what’s wrong if someone is happy in aviation as he performs it? There are more ways to enjoy flying as your occasional burger runs and a bit aerotowing. Just because you don’t get out of your little puddle, this must not be true for anyone else.

LeSving wrote:

A “professional” modern GA pilot is one that fly his TMG or microlight, VFR from Lyon to the North Cape and back. A “professional” GA pilot is one who arranges fly ins for experimentals and vintage aircraft. It’s one who fly aerobatcs, one who build his own planes. One that engages in making good flying clubs. It’s also one that show his finger to EASA and all that nonsense. In many ways the LAA is a good representation of modern GA, only in a strange UK kind of way.

So anyone who wants to take his family on a trip to Morocco from Germany, fly with the club and friends up to Kiruna, or takes his dog and parasails into the alps is an unprofessional pilot? I really don’t get your constant claim that we should all be happy and “show the middle finger to EASA” because of your nationalist view of aviation. Flying is to cross borders, not strengthen them. Flying has gotten much, much easier for many Europeans BECAUSE of the EU and BECAUSE of EASA and most regulatory crap is nationalistic bullshit originating in the LBA or similar institutions who fear losing power. Perhaps you should take your Vans and travel through Europe and fly to more than 20 destination airports. Travelling broadens the horizon.

Your moaning is exactly what is putting people off. It is not supportive, not inspiring, not dreaming, not selling, it is moaning about things you don’t care to understand. If you are happy with your “professional” GA, then be my guest, but don’t claim I am stuck in the 70s or unprofessional because I don’t share this view.

Canuck wrote:

For example there are NINE exams and of course a book to go with each of the NINE exams. In Canada (and in the USA as I understand it), there is ONE exam and ONE book to go with it.

So what? In DE you need one to nine dates, depending on your schedule, none to nine books, depending on your favourite Author or learning method. I can’t see a big deal in splitting the knowledge into separate topics.

Canuck wrote:

I haven’t tried, but I bet on a calm day with the trim set correctly, you can add power and the aircraft will take off. Start turning left and reduce power when you are abeam the numbers, keep turning left and you will land… this is not rocket science (as much as we all like to believe we have mastered some complex craft).

Taking off isn’t the problem, landing is. With a C172 you can learn to land in 40*ish landings, depending on aptitude, content of the education before (acutally, my average is just over 50 landings, but I think it is necessary to be able to fly to an other airport prior the first solo). However, you can’t just train for the license, you have to educate for the emergencies and procedures you can’t train for.

But by all means, the curriculum of things to be knows in described in Part FCL and the AMC/GM. So what would you delete from the syllabus and why?

Peter wrote:

Long term GA needs a fair bit of money and I suspect GA is one of the few hobbies which people don’t give up easily even if they cannot afford to fly much.

Well, in most cases I have witnessed you need more disposable money to initiate flying than to keep flying. I know people who fly 200+ hours each year in gliders on 500€ per year. You can operate a small Jodel or Morane for 100 hours per year with an annual budget of 10000 Euros all in, and you can spend a fortune on old Jets if you like. There is flying for all budgets. And I don’t think disposable income is the main driver in giving up flying. Most people who did not stop by medical reasons simply lost interest or got scared in the aircraft. We have had 4 or 5 out of around 100 people who stopped flying within the first 5 years of their license in recent years, but none of them due to financial reasons. But we have some re-entries, too.

Canuck wrote:

Canada : Buy one book. Review. Sit one three hour exam. Pay $105 (£62).

UK : Buy nine books. Read all nine. Schedule and sit 9 exams at £30 per exam (£270).

DE: Buy none to 1000 books, read some, Schedule and sit one to nine exams at 75€ for all of them – no matter how many schedules.

Peter wrote:

Deleting the slide rule would free up maybe 10hrs of [non mandatory but somehow necessary] ground school time. Deleting all the other crap like signals squares would be good too.

You don’t need to know the slide rule / E6B / Aviat. You just need to be able to calculate a wind correction angle. If you do this via sine rule, graphic wind triangle or electronic E6B is your choice. I have tested all methods and I am way faster with the slide rule than with anything else, so for my usage it stays. But that’s fashion, not mandate. The signal squares take about 5 Minutes to explain and 10 Minutes to learn. But as they are just part of the general rule to know the basic airfield / airport ground signs I think it wouldn’t be wise to cross them out – as long as they do exist or have relevance. You’d need to get rid of the signals square, that would be a better initiative. But I really can’t see someone not making their license because they have to calculate a wind correction angle.

Anyway, take a stroll through FCL and the AMC/GM and pick what you think is obsolete in there. I am curious what you think isn’t necessary for pilots to know.

172driver wrote:

And who wouldn’t like these views:

You can’t relocate LA into Europe. But similar pictures are possible in Europe and EASA grants them, too. Only silly local stuff may prohibit night VFR or the mandatory Flugleiter.

CKN wrote:

On the positive side, I have learned somewhat how to make time where there did not appear to be any and not alienate (well not entirely) my family in the process.

I think it is vitally important to include the family into aviation if one family member picks up flying. Usually we need to teach max pax and taking care of passengers anyway, so I usually combine this with taking along family and friends in flight training, when it is possible. Usually this is the case on the navigation flights and when the student is scheduled to solo at other airports. Usually the family has plenty questions while the student is making their rounds and they understand the obsessive power of aviation. In many cases family then travels with the new pilot, aslong as he can come up with interesting destinations. But I usually point to the trip reports here and in other forums for ideas where to fly. I have made very good experiences with including the family.

Peter wrote:

I see too many pilots who don’t seem to do this; they just do local flights to the same places over and over.

Exactly, and for some of them this is all they wanted and they are fine. But this isn’t interesting for non-flying family. But a weekend trip to Prague, Kopenhagen, Billund (with children), to the North Sea, getting to know all the small and big nice places in Europe is welcomed by many non-flying family.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Quite a few of these were European exams and costs, which today are at a level which is outright ridiculous for a PRIVATE license.

Funny, I have yet to meet one. If all, with the usual multiple choice tests you don’t really need to know anything, but remember the questions. The Exams don’t cost that much here. Sure, you don’t need to know much to fly in severe CAVOK around your local puddle of mud, but if you want to travel and if things go south you need an understanding of what you do. So go through the AMCs and pick what you like to delete – and why. I have never met someone who claimed the theoretical knowledge was overloaded and who could name me things that are considered not worth to teach in the regulations. Please be my first.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

There is no good reason why airplane certification for light airplanes up to 2 tons or so has to be so extremely expensive, as it was not so before and has only become so due to unrealistic and bureaucratic requirements.

I am afraid that the new regulation of CS23 and the harmonization with the FAA won’t have a lot of effect on this, because the real certification costs are not that big, if you set up the program to be certified in the first place. If you look at who shoots against certification, it is companies who somehow built an aircraft and want to have that certified. Of course you need to do a lot of the work twice, if you change things late in the project and your proof of compliance is affected by the changes. But that is nothing certification is to blame, there is nothing you don’t need to test just for certification reasons that you don’t need for determining the safety of the aircraft in the first place. If you decide to build a certified aircraft below 2000kg, the EASA fees for the DOA, POA and the TC are lower than 100000€. Work done twice is a problem of the organisation, not of the certification.

LeSving wrote:

That is exactly what certification is: bureaucratic requirements.

Sorry, but I just can’t take you serious. Certification is the independent investigation of airworthiness, so that the pilot can rely on defined flight characteristics and safety levels. If you don’t want that, there is a whole world of uncertified aviation open for you, but don’t think because of your preference this must be true for everyone.

LeSving wrote:

Military aircraft aren’t certified, they are only built according to (military) specifications.

… and those specifications are certified by the military certification institutes. You can’t just tell the militay to comply with the specifications and not have proven compliance. How would that work out?

LeSving wrote:

The specifications themselves will spark development and research to find new and better ways to meet the specifications. Certification does the exact opposite.

Oh come on, that is neither true, nor substantiated with data. The first FRP aircraft were certified (fs24 phoenix, Windecker Eagle), the first glass cockpits were certified and even today there is no experimental fly by wire, although civillian certified FBW is around some time. With the Antares you can buy certified electric aircraft since 2004 and they are around in larger volume than experimental electric aircraft. Same goes for glass cockpits and auto pilots, new materials and aerodynamics. How many Diesels fly uncertiefied and how many in certified aircraft? There just isn’t data to support the claim certification would be a development stopper. Properly done it isn’t much overhead over the tasks you need to do anyway. But you need to accept it.

LeSving wrote:

The method is simply a test program for 20-50 h on each individual aircraft, and also sign off on the build process.

And that should be less expensive? So for the Cessna 172 this would result in a flight test program of over 1075000 (one million and 75 thousand!) flight hours and individual certification of the building process instead of showing compliance once for the aircraft and the build process. Are you really sure this is the way to go? Despite the fact that you can’t possibly tackle all issues on 25 hours flight testing for a new design.

LeSving wrote:

For gliders, all gliders have to be recoverable from a spin, and all glider pilots have to be able to initiate a spin and to recover from a spin. Why not do the same for private GA? it would save lots of lives each year. Another specification could be that all (new) private GA aircraft had a BRS, in the same way that glider pilots have to wear a chute. If those were the only specifications, it would be better than the certification nonsense we have today IMO.

First of all, there is no rule that glider pilots need to wear a chute, only in special circumstances like local competitions, aerobatics and flight training. Then, many microlights would not be able to pass spin recovery tests. While I would like to see them mandatory and eliminating dangerous designs as the WT9 (they showed quite recently – during the TC process I might say – that it is well possible to get into an unrecoverable spin with the Dynamic), it negates somehow your stance on certification requirements and microlights and experimentals being even safer than certified aircraft.

Mandating a BRS would mandate a real certification program for this, otherwise it might very well kill people, as it has already done outside the certified (and: tested!) installations in the Cirrusses.

Martin wrote:

Yes, we could use a better specification and hopefully we’ll get one

CS23 has been reorganised and harmonised with the FAA, so it will come (NPA 2016-05). Although I don’t think it will make certification easier or less expensive, because those aren’t the dominating costs in the first place.

mh wrote:

I am sorry for the long posting, but I “need” to comment on some of the posts. I try to keep it brief.

like a cat. I will try not to kill that bird.

On LeSving’s definition of a ‘professional’ pilot

A “professional” modern GA pilot is one that fly his TMG or microlight, VFR from Lyon to the North Cape and back. A “professional” GA pilot is one who arranges fly ins for experimentals and vintage aircraft. It’s one who fly aerobatcs, one who build his own planes. One that engages in making good flying clubs. It’s also one that show his finger to EASA and all that nonsense. In many ways the LAA is a good representation of modern GA, only in a strange UK kind of way.

There is quite a lot of the philosophy of Richard Bach here, and I don’t think LeS was being critical of a touring pilot in a modern aircraft – professional being in quotations – just trying to say that grassroots flying might be regarded as equally professional to IFR touring.

mh wrote:

Although I don’t think it will make certification easier or less expensive, because those aren’t the dominating costs in the first place.

I’m not an aerospace engineer so I can only go by what people at EASA wrote. I vaguely recall that VLAs should fit into the new requirements but there won’t be the limitations associated with VLAs anymore. So they can be made with higher MTOM without waivers (for generous baggage compartment and fuel load) and with the possibility of IFR. I know that a four-seater will be in a different certification level but I don’t know what it means in practice (how the requirements differ compared to two-seaters).

I agree that a proper management is key in certification, generally speaking. But there can be a difference of opinion on what is sufficient – e.g. a designer might believe a computer model is enough while an authority might require actual testing.

Peter wrote:

You cannot fly to “Paris” anymore, since they stupidly pulled out immigration from all of them but Lognes.

I believe you cannot even fly to Lognes anymore…

mh wrote:

but don’t think because of your preference this must be true for everyone.

That, and similar, is your words mh, not mine. Please stop projecting meanings on me that I don’t have. Did you even read what I wrote? I said MY little irritation from time to time. I repeat: My little irritation from time to time It just isn’t possible to turn this into something I would like to be true for everyone . I have nothing against people flying in 70s airplanes from A to B, I do that myself, and much older planes. All I’m saying is private GA is so much more than that. On this site is is 90%, which is a bit weird, strange – and a bit annoying – from time to time I could write long posts about why I personally have no urge to fly IFR, with a FP, in controlled airspace, on autopilot, for hours, at 20k, from A to B, but I guess you will also take that as something I think must be true for everyone.

mh wrote:

And that should be less expensive? So for the Cessna 172 this would result in a flight test program of over 1075000 (one million and 75 thousand!) flight hours and individual certification of the building process instead of showing compliance once for the aircraft and the build process. Are you really sure this is the way to go? Despite the fact that you can’t possibly tackle all issues on 25 hours flight testing for a new design.

- and you conveniently “forgot” my next sentence where I wrote that such a system would not be practical for factory built aircraft?

Anyway, certifications and standards/specifications are different things altogether.
mh wrote:

and those specifications are certified by the military certification institutes. You can’t just tell the militay to comply with the specifications and not have proven compliance. How would that work out?

Military aircraft are not certified, period (maybe in Germany they are, I don’t know, but that is beside the point). They are simply deemed airworthy for military operations, by the military, when within specs and flown with satisfactory results by a test pilot. The specifications changes all the time. It changes with equipment, new equipment being installed – old equipment removed, ad hoc repairs and fixes here and there. Better engines installed, different wings, new pods, you name it. The military sets the specifications themselves, and military test pilots checks to see if it all works out. There are no certifications involved, like it is for civilian aircraft. Military aircraft are weapons of war, just like military organizations are made for war. There is no place for certification, only specs and standards. Specs can change in the blink of an eye, certification cannot.

Certification also include the use of standards and specs, but is also beside the point. Certification is one additional step further, and a very large step indeed, and it’s exclusively a bureaucratic step. It’s a very expensive step and very useless step for private GA, partly because it is a waste of money that private GA do not have. Medical equipment and airliners are very different ball games than private GA.

RobertL18C wrote:

There is quite a lot of the philosophy of Richard Bach here

This lead me to spend the last 2-3 hours re-reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull on Google Play, this time the version with the last “new” chapters It’s something every pilot should read indeed, or we stand the chance of forgetting who we are.

BeechBaby wrote:

We live in a generation of cheap deals. Be it a restaraunt, hairdresser, concert, flying lesson. Deals negate customer loyalty, companies flock to sell volume, at zero margin.

I remember seeing movies of people dancing the nights away in Berlin a few days before the war broke out, similar scenes in the times of the economical crisis in the 1920ties in the US, e.t.c. I reckon today a lot of people are inherently insecure about their future, aided by the mostly negativist media and the polulist politicians who promise deliverance from a doom and gloom they make up themselfs first. So they more live for the day then for the next week.

On the other hand, surveys I´ve read about today´s youth show a different picture. They are far more conservative then they used to be, focussed on good education to be able to get to the point where they can get a good job, e.t.c. But clearly, with the negative perception about any future at all, lots of people simply fight depression by trying to get quick satisfaction out of unimportant but easy to get things. Also not new in times like this, where conflict and confrontation on a global scale appear to be much more likely than they were a couple of years ago. The lack of trust into any kind of organized structure, and the lack of thrustworthiness of the leadership, the press and most opinion leaders do indeed plant the seed for moral recession in most of the Western society. In such an environment, people tend to live for the day, not the week or month ahead, even if the perception is largely imagined.

LeSving, I don’t always agree with your opinions, but I think you touch some good points here. (Both regarding the flying, and the mil stuff).
Certifying the A400M to civil standards was apparently a big deal (at least according to press releases), so it must be a bit harder.

Availability of Military hardware / planes is also pretty awful (if looking at numbers coming from magasines etc), much much lower than a civilian airliner, for instances.