Jay Honeck wrote:

Mary and I have noticed a substantial (and depressing) drop off in personal
flying of late. Often we are the only plane in the pattern, nowadays.

Worse, we've notice far fewer people talking to ATC -- which indicates that
this may not be a local phenomenon. On Sunday, for example, we flew 90
minutes over to Rantoul, IL, and back, and heard maybe three other planes,
the whole way, outside of "working" aircraft. (And one of them was Jim
Burns, who was with us!)

We *do* tend to fly at "off" times (Sunday afternoons; Wednesdays and
Thursdays, mostly) -- but the change we're noticing has been pretty dramatic
since gas prices spiked. There just doesn't seem to be nearly as many
people flying.

Anyone else noticing this?

Yes. We're noticed it particularly in our flying club. Five years ago,
the club had 20 members (about 10 were active, I believe) and two
airplanes. We now have one airplane, 10 members, but only four of us
who currently fly the airplane. And the four of us have flown the
airplane only 54 hours total.

Matt