It would be as interesting to see the hours declared from the medicals with this data, since this adds an additional perspective the raw numbers of pilots.
I would also be interesting to know how many have a UK PPL but not an EASA PPL as well.
Yes I am sure many have both EASA PPL and the national PPL.
I have never seen the hours data published. I think it would quite possibly be embarrassing – if it showed what % give up within the first year or two. The CAA has always avoided publishing data which would directly show this. I recall some previous threads on this from years ago… one can make some guesses based on some reasonable assumptions, from the license issues, the age distribution, etc. And I am sure this issue – the high attrition rate – is all over Europe.
I hadn’t realised how few LAPL,NPPL, and PPL(M) holders there are.
Of the EASA and UKPPL holders, I wonder how many like me, hold both licences.
I vaguely recall some information from AOPA many years ago to say that up to 70% of the initial 5 year EASA PPLs were not renewed on expiry.
Edit. Posted before reading similar remarks above.
The NPPL numbers shown are indeed low but I think that’s because the published number doesn’t include those flying on the Medical Self Declaration. For the NPPL, I would think this will today be the majority.
This thread suggests there may be ~ 2k NPPL holders.
I suspect from association membership numbers and knowing how many people who have both UK and EASA licences, that the number of GA (ie non CPL and above) licence holders is around 15000. I would suspect about 1/4 are pretty much non active so call that 4000, so 11000 active. The average amongst that lot is probably in the region 30-40 hours per year at best.
[this is of course beermat analysis but I suspect isn’t far off]
Returning to the discussion about a year ago, we were talking about this in the (4 aircraft) aéroclub this summer. I’ve summarised the first half of the year in the table below, so it would be reasonably safe to double these figures for annual numbers. 560 hours in 6 months for 54 members, average slightly over 10h, so 20.5 hours per year.
This isn’t the full picture, because at least three members also own their own aircraft, one of which lends his plane to a several pilots (myself included 
). There are several people like me who fly a few hours on holiday, but do most of their flying elsewhere. There’s also some based microlights not affiliated with the club.
The DGAC publish hours flown per aéroclub here (by clicking on the département then selecting the club)
I can’t see any information on any of the aeroclub pages I looked at.
Those annual hours look similar to the UK profile, I would think.
Balliol’s numbers look right too but how does one relate this to the 30k aircraft which one often sees mentioned?
It would be extremely interesting to get data on how long the average new PPL hangs in there. Maybe somebody will have a go under FOIA? We aren’t going to find out any other way; the CAA has never published anything directly, but obviously they must know – at least to the extent that they know about valid medicals. They can never know what most of the NPPL population is doing.
Sorry for resurrecting this old topic, but I was just wondering the same, about how many pilots are out there in the world.
So can we conclude that the world average is about 0.1 % of the population? USA being probably the highest with 0.2% and some African, Asian countries being at or below 0.05%. That gives about 3.5 – 4 million pilots worldwide. It’s a pretty exclusive club I would say, even compared to the number of sailboats for example (that being in the 10 million range worldwide). (if we assume that people having a license to or being able to navigate one is 1 per boat)
Then there’s currency. In the US a licence is forever, but a medical isn’t. There are plenty of people who have a PPL but no medical. It’s possible to download the “airman database” and do whatever analysis you want on it.
(For example, I wanted to know how many ATP-AMES there are – since a friend of mine happens ot be one, more or less by accident. The number is surprisingly high, around 500, though I doubt many of them practice the craft).
Vladimir wrote:
I found some statistics from different years (from 2009 till now)
So, a quick perusal reveals that us pilots are basically one in a thousand types! We all knew we were special, and this confirms it.
