On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:11:29 -0000, Dylan Smith
wrote:

On 2007-02-19, Ron Rosenfeld wrote:
I suppose it is one reason why Europe, with a population more than two and
half times that of the United States, has a fraction of the GA activity.
--ron

Europe isn't nearly as homogenous as the United States in terms of
wealth. Europe (just the European Union) includes countries like Romania
and Bulgaria where just owning a *car* is a struggle - these countries
are still recovering from decades of Soviet rule and have economies
which are in a desperate condition even compared to France (let alone
the United States). If you look at Europe in a wider context than just
the EU, you end up with countries like Albania with a GDP per capita of
$5600 (compared with the GDP per capita of the United States which is
$43500 - almost 10 times higher).

That's very true. There are certainly areas of the US with similar
disadvantages. The inner cities and some rural areas come to mind.
Probably not as poor as Romania, though.

You can't really think of Europe in the same terms as the fifty states
of the US. Europe is pretty disparate in both wealth and culture. It's
not like an equivalent of the US where they speak funny languages.

Even if GA in Europe had no regulation whatsoever, there would be a lot
less GA activity in Europe than in the United States.

There is some good news though - the head of EASA has said he wants to
reduce the regulatory burden on GA and see it as 'healthy as it is in
the United States'. It remains to be seen whether they will actually
implement it, but over the last 18 months they have been making the
right noises. They even listened to and accepted the responses from GA
pilots over the Single European Sky which shocked the hell out of me.

That's good. My only experience with European flying is a bit of flying in
the Azores, in a Portugese registered a/c. It seemed it was more difficult
and expensive to obtain a temporary license. The flying privileges were
significantly more limited to what I have in the US. There was a lot more
control, but some of that was due to the flying club being based at Lajes
field, which is a large airport with shared military and commercial
control.
--ron