On Apr 26, 2:28 pm, Larry Dighera wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:53:18 -0400, "Marco Leon"
wrote in :

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fa...=1&oref=slogin

The number of student pilots is down by about a third since 1990,
from 129,000 to 88,000. The number of private pilots is down from
299,000 to 236,000, according to statistics kept by the Federal
Aviation Administration. And they are aging.

Some longtime private pilots fear that an industry is withering,
and a bit of Americana is slipping away, along with a bit of
freedom and joy. And it is happening in part because of lack of
interest; Walter Mitty doesn't want to fly anymore.


Maybe one reason there are fewer pilots now is that the pilots who
learned to fly in World War II have been leaving us in the last 17
years. The war exposed a lot of men (and some women) to flying, and
many of them continued to fly after the war. In 1990 many of those
pilots would have been in their 60s.

What we need is a way to expose people to flying like the war did.
Hopefully the Young Eagles program will help with that.