The social scene needs improving!!
So many airfields were busy with social activity 20-30 years ago and are dead now.
As I have written before in this and other threads on this topic, practically everybody who has enough money to actually fly in GA, is going to be in one of two groups
Also participation time is key. Of the young people, are mostly working Mon-Fri and are very focused on where they spend or waste their weekend. Women almost totally want a social scene, and the guys are not going to sit around all day if there are no girls!! You get exactly the same situation in sailing clubs. I used to do water-skiing many years ago (stopped mostly because the club lost access to the lake) and this situation was totally obvious.
There is a lower limit on how financially accessible (how cheap) you can make GA. The numbers have to add up somehow. If the DOC (direct operating cost) is say €100/hr then you have to recover this somehow. You can push club members’ annual time down to say 5-10 hrs/year (probably common in the French club scene, I am told) and that means they can participate for €500-1000 a year (plus some extras, depending on how the “club” deals with cross-subsidies taken from the higher time flyers 
) but then you will end up with pilots with so little currency they will never gain confidence to go anywhere, so they will drop out and will need to be continually replaced by newcomers.
Here’s a counterpoint:
When I joined our club about 7 years or so ago, the average age was in the high 50s / low 60s and we had an exit list (meaning people wanting to leave, but had to wait until someone bought their share).
Today the average age in the low-mid 40s, with the median probably in the high 30s. We also have a waitlist (membership is capped). So, what happened? Most of our new members work in the tech industry and have very nice salaries. That money has to go somewhere, and quite obviously GA is attractive. What is interesting, though, is the mission profile. When I joined, there were lots of long x-country flights, often several days. The newer members, however, prefer to stay close to base and don’t do much of what I would call ‘real’ x-country traveling.
What may also surprise some (most of all @Peter) is that we have no social scene to speak of. The only social event is the monthly membership meeting, and even that is sometimes done via Zoom.
So there – it’s not all doom and gloom!
I am completely prepared to believe that the US has a totally different dynamic. It has a population broadly similar to Europe but has about 5x the GA activity of Europe (numbers further back in this thread).
The near total lack of cost sharing discussion in US GA social media shows yet another aspect of it. It is a lot more affordable over there. It is cheaper to fly and people earn a lot more money.
IMO the social scene is very important, at least where I am. This can be demonstrated by the fact we have a dynamic, young and social gliding club, here at LFFK. And its membership is growing. Their age split goes from 14years old to 80years old.
Our club used to have a very vibrant social scene and we used to fly 4 SEPs ranging with about 1600hrs a year. Back in the 1990s we had 90 pilots who flew regularly.
Nowadays we are down to 1 SEP and 1 ULM. The DA40d is doing less than 400hrs a year. We have 9 or possibly 10 pilots who fly regularly. We try to attract young would be PPLs but in small town and with several other airfields serving larger towns, nearby this is not hugely successful these days. Despite the BIA and financial assistance offered to them.
When young potential pilots do join the club and gain their PPL they are at an age where they are just starting a career and many leave to work in larger towns and join an aeroclub nearer their work.
And although they remain members here and return to fly here in their vacations they are not able to take part in a regular social scene.
The ULM has this year, for the first time been flown more hours than the DA40.
This is not surprising at €80 an hour and with an increasing number of ULM fields in interesting locations, plus as @LeSving writes little regulation and an almost a get in and fly it, in that one can become a ULM pilot or at least solo at 14years old and you get your licence as soon as you can demonstrate you can fly the aircraft, safely.
The problem with the ULM crowd is that they tend to join, get their licence and then after a short while, buy their own ULM, allowing them to be more adventurous.
One young member I talked to is thinking of buying a Jodel D21 a homebuilt tricycle ULM from someone who has built and flown several Jodels. He is talking of an investment of around €20,000 but he wants to go places for days or weeks at a time.
All this leaves little or no time for an aeroclub social scene. There is also an owners club. Cheap membership, they help each other out with maintenance, mentoring advice and hangarage. This club has a super social scene but it is limited to once or twice a year and the occasional fly outs.
But for the aeroclub there is a steady decline in SEP hours flown, number of active members and less and less people turning up for social events. On the 3 latest social events we have had, if the gliding club members had not joined in there would have been very few people in attendance.
On a bright note at the beginning of the year we hosted one of Le Boutique’s breakfast fly ins and that was a great success with around 80 aircraft flying in from all over France to chat over coffee and viennoise (pain au chocolat, pain au raisin, croissant etc).
So we have tried many things to rejuvinate the club and I will be studying this thread intently for any new ideas. We are not yet ready to accept that the young people of today all just prefer other forms of leisure activity.
Our club here is not in the best of shape, a little bit like what Gallois describes. So I was thinking of why certified GA is declining and what could be done.
Reason #1 : little presence on social media
I think the biggest reason GA is little known and remains confidential is because it is so small on social media.
We have nothing to hide, an awesome hobby, providing exceptional views and esperiences. There is no reason why European GA is so absent on YT, IG, podcasts or Tik Tok.
I am all against social media for me and my family, but one has to admit that an activity absent from SM is absent in the mind of the people period.
I don’t get why some bodies (pilot federations in Europe, who else?) don’t pour content on SM like crazy, showing how awesome it is to be a pilot :
Reason #2 : cost and CO2
To me, both factors need to push GA in the Rotax-olution. There is no way around it. It allows to reduce DOC of flying, recovering sane levels, showing efforts for the public health and the planet. I have seen some clubs buy Rotax aircraft, some selling them after a few years, some keeping them, but no major shift. I am no Rotax lobbyist but it is just obvious.
What I hear in clubs : “our mechanic don’t like rotax”, “we don’t have a tank for unleaded”, "who will go and refill the tank at the gas station? ", “those new planes are too fragile” etc etc….
Then, GA bodies (pilot federations in Europe, who else?) should provide to all clubs and flight schools the tools, the whole environement to ease the trasition to operating certified Rotax engines with unleaded fuel (the only way it makes sense).
They could provide :
Just my thoughts. I am unhappy as say “one should do that” and not doing anything but still, i had to write it somewhere.
I guess flying federations are like my club, they already have more ideas than people to execute them.
The club I’m with at the moment, seem to have found a really good formula.
They operate a fleet of four new, Savannah aircraft.
The club owners build one (they are home build aircraft) bring it into the club and operate it there. After a while someone comes along and wants to buy one. So they sell it, and build another one. This means that the club has new aircraft all the time (not old clapped out aircraft that its struggling to keep airworthy) and I’m sure the sales probably helps to bring a little income. The buyer also gets a really good aircraft build by very experienced builders and the aircraft turnover is helping to build a community of Savannah operators in Ireland.
As a result, the aircraft rental is very cheap at just €110 per hour.
The low rates being in lots of people for whom aviation was previously unaffordable, and indeed has lots of members of both genders.
There is really no foreign touring, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. They are all happy to do local flights and just be in the sky.
It seems to be a model that is working really well for everyone involved.
@Jujupilote I don’t think social media exposure has much to do with it… it’s just the cost, plain and simple.
The average salary in the UK is around £30k – that can just barely support rent and going to the pub on a weekend for most parts of the country. Spending £200 on an hour flying lesson doesn’t fit into the picture for most.
As the number of airfields is on the decline, there is an increase of “gatekeeping” at existing airfields with clubs and ownership circles becoming more cliquey.
I hate to be so cynical! It really is just entirely down to cost though. There’s nothing more to it.
@Jujupilote I wholeheartedly agree.
When I (re-)joined the club a few years ago, one of the factors was that the club’s travel aircrafts were (and still are) DA40-TDIs. 8L/100 with 3-4 seats at 120kts make for insane CO2-nometrics, at least by aviation standards.
As for Rotax, I find it really dumb that we can’t have mogas distributed at airfields (the very same that is distributed in car stations). People use it in Rotaxes, it’s perfectly legal, the engines were built and certified for it, but for some reason it can’t be distributed commercially to aircrafts and has to be delivered privately. Other fuels like UL91 cost roughly the same as 100LL in France, which does not help either.
We are also replacing our (mogas) DA20s with Elixir’s, which could help further decrease training cost (it’s supposed to be a ~60€/h aircraft, we’ll see if this advertised number pans out).
For social media, I can see the point. Sometimes my club feels like a hidden niche, a very tight-knit community far from the sight of the many, which is all the more appreciable, but it still suffers from low visibility. The club is really what people make of it. If they get more invested, many more things happen, which has been the case recently. But I don’t think paying for influencers or professional editors is the way to go. The downside for having such low rental costs is that there is no gross margin and no real room to invest in non-operational costs. Taking that aspect away would mean becoming a commercial entity focused on growth. If anything, it’s the member’s job to get invested. Most do in various ways, but most aren’t very tech savvy, although this will gradually change with the arrival of new blood. I for one intend to (try to) make better club pictures (for the sake of it, but also for PR).
I don’t think social media exposure has much to do with it… it’s just the cost, plain and simple.
Re SM neither do I.
Private flying ain’t cool (anymore?), period. As a general image, it burns gas, pollutes, old technology (what? Still gotta wiggle that stick? Where’s the home button?), just a hobby, noisy, and selfish. In other words it is old fashioned for most of the younger (and some of the not that old) generation.
Cost @IO390, at least around here, is only one of the many factors, but certainly not the only one nor the largest.
IMHO the main reason for the demise of GA is the whole list of constraints… as in currency, medical, weather, fleet availability, initial training, recurrent training, constant law and rule changes, system complexity, physical fitness, language proficiency, time invested, and so on.
As a better definition, it is a lack of attractiveness vs investment, as in ROI, that is the first factor in GA’s decline. Too little return in exchange for those constraints.
A counterpoint. In our club the median age has gone down from about 50 – 56 to around 35 – 40 over the last few years (and a few old farts like me skew that, LOL!), we have a waiting list and pretty much all new entrants are in their 30s. Most work in tech and simply enjoy the flying. Not too much of a social scene either, apart from the monthly meeting. From a what I can gather, the same pretty much holds true for most/all clubs around here. Also, the flight schools are full of young people, not all of which dream of flying a Boeing. So, while the heydays of the 70s and 80s may be over, I’d say GA is pretty darn healthy around here.
