Strangely, I could find no statistics about French pilots. Anyone know
how many pilots are in France?

However, here are the French airport statistics:

Airports - with paved runways:
Total: 283

Airports - with unpaved runways:
total: 195

Heliports:
3

In other words, France has about the same number of airports as
Wisconsin and Illinois -- making French aviation hardly a topic worthy
of continued discussion.

Anyone who might doubt that aviation is dead in France (by comparison
with the US) should note that the US has more than 19,000 airports,
meaning that France has around 2% of the airports we have.

Some more stats from France:

Category of Aircraft / Number of aircraft
Aeroplane 6347
Amphibius 1
Balloon 675
Glider 1669
Gyroplane 1
Helicopter 792
Other 63

I'm assuming that this number includes all French commercial airliners.
Since the US has around 211,000 aircraft, France has about 3% of the
number of aircraft of the US.

So, I guess the bottom line is that aviation in France is simply
irrelevant, dead or not. Given the miniscule number of airplanes,
airports, and pilots in France, it's surprising to me that they haven't
eliminated avgas taxes all together.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"