How many pilots, ever?

I've been trying to come up with some numbers that will impress upon
my son the stark rarity and unique nature of his accomplishment as a
new Private Pilot.

In short, I thought it would be neat to figure out how many pilots
have EVER flown, since 1903. It's easy to get the number of US pilots
year-by-year, but (of course) these include duplicates over time.
Therefore, I'm stumped.

Any ideas how to tabulate this figure?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I've been trying to come up with some numbers that will impress upon
my son the stark rarity and unique nature of his accomplishment as a
new Private Pilot.

Why? It will be far more meaningful to him if he discovers it himself,
a few years down the road.

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jay Honeck wrote:
In short, I thought it would be neat to figure out how many pilots
have EVER flown, since 1903. It's easy to get the number of US pilots
year-by-year, but (of course) these include duplicates over time.
Therefore, I'm stumped.

Any ideas how to tabulate this figure?

Not a clue about worldwide, but for the U.S. one can make a "reasonable"
estimate based on FAA stats at this link:

http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/a...atistics/2006/

Table 17 in particular seems to suggest that, excluding student pilot
certificates, ~25,000 private certificates were issued each year for the
last 10 years. I'd use that amount as an average and multiply it by ~60
to get on the order of at least ~1.5 million private pilot certificates
ever issued in the U.S.

Just my attempt at a swag.

I've been trying to come up with some numbers that will impress upon
my son the stark rarity and unique nature of his accomplishment as a
new Private Pilot.


No doubt pilots are few but the small number of pilots isn't such a
big deal. What matters is how many out of those actively seeking pilot
training actually go on to become pilots. That is a far better
indicator of the difficulty involved in becoming a pilot than just the
total number of pilots. The very few private pilots in existence would
be very impressive if everybody in the US had a goal to get a PPL (and
most failed) which is not the case. From what I can tell, those that
show a little bit of inclination to weather the odds do indeed go on
to get their PPLs.

the key is to equate that number of completed private pilots against those
that held a student certificate
and then to key in on the number of pilots who earned their first rating
under the age of 18
and compare those numbers to the US or world wide population..

BT

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
Jay Honeck wrote:
In short, I thought it would be neat to figure out how many pilots
have EVER flown, since 1903. It's easy to get the number of US pilots
year-by-year, but (of course) these include duplicates over time.
Therefore, I'm stumped.

Any ideas how to tabulate this figure?

Not a clue about worldwide, but for the U.S. one can make a "reasonable"
estimate based on FAA stats at this link:

http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/a...atistics/2006/

Table 17 in particular seems to suggest that, excluding student pilot
certificates, ~25,000 private certificates were issued each year for the
last 10 years. I'd use that amount as an average and multiply it by ~60
to get on the order of at least ~1.5 million private pilot certificates
ever issued in the U.S.

Just my attempt at a swag.

Jay Honeck wrote in news:2599f35e-bf7f-489d-8912-
:

I've been trying to come up with some numbers that will impress upon
my son the stark rarity and unique nature of his accomplishment as a
new Private Pilot.

In short, I thought it would be neat to figure out how many pilots
have EVER flown, since 1903. It's easy to get the number of US pilots
year-by-year, but (of course) these include duplicates over time.
Therefore, I'm stumped.

Any ideas how to tabulate this figure?


Don't you have guests to look after?



Bertie

wrote in message
...
I've been trying to come up with some numbers that will impress upon
my son the stark rarity and unique nature of his accomplishment as a
new Private Pilot.


No doubt pilots are few but the small number of pilots isn't such a
big deal. What matters is how many out of those actively seeking pilot
training actually go on to become pilots. That is a far better
indicator of the difficulty involved in becoming a pilot than just the
total number of pilots. The very few private pilots in existence would
be very impressive if everybody in the US had a goal to get a PPL (and
most failed) which is not the case. From what I can tell, those that
show a little bit of inclination to weather the odds do indeed go on
to get their PPLs.

No stats to support this, but I seem to remember reading here in the past
that out of all the individuals who get a student license, 90% drop out.
Out of those that get the PPL, 90% stop flying after 5 years.

Why? It will be far more meaningful to him if he discovers it himself,
a few years down the road.

Time will give him that perspective. What I want to know (and I think
would be cool to know, just for ****s and giggles) is:

- How many pilots have ever been certificated

- How many billions of humans have *ever* lived.

Since man has longed to fly since time immemorial, and only a
miniscule percentage of humans have ever achieved it, I think this
would be a very cool statistic to know. Your mileage may vary.

Sadly, I haven't found a very good way to measure either number.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Just to say, since 1903, maybe 4 or 5 million people worldwide have learned
how to fly. Maybe 3 million are still alive today. World populations is 5
billion, so a pilot is less than 1 of a thousand.




"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
...
| Why? It will be far more meaningful to him if he discovers it himself,
| a few years down the road.
|
| Time will give him that perspective. What I want to know (and I think
| would be cool to know, just for ****s and giggles) is:
|
| - How many pilots have ever been certificated
|
| - How many billions of humans have *ever* lived.
|
| Since man has longed to fly since time immemorial, and only a
| miniscule percentage of humans have ever achieved it, I think this
| would be a very cool statistic to know. Your mileage may vary.
|
| Sadly, I haven't found a very good way to measure either number.
| --
| Jay Honeck
| Iowa City, IA
| Pathfinder N56993
| www.AlexisParkInn.com
| "Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote in news:552fff1f-c400-4a6d-ad11-
:

Why? It will be far more meaningful to him if he discovers it himself,
a few years down the road.

Time will give him that perspective. What I want to know (and I think
would be cool to know, just for ****s and giggles) is:

- How many pilots have ever been certificated

- How many billions of humans have *ever* lived.

Since man has longed to fly since time immemorial, and only a
miniscule percentage of humans have ever achieved it, I think this
would be a very cool statistic to know. Your mileage may vary.

Sadly, I haven't found a very good way to measure either number.

I'm not sure you can get how many billions of humans have ever lived, but
you should be able to get annual new birth record counts since 1903 when
Orville & Wilber started this whole thing in the US... It might be equally
as interesting to compare to the number of humans who had the opportunity
to learn to fly... You might want to go back to 1884 or something (kids
born in 1889 would have been 17 in 1903)...

I can't tell you where to get those records, but I know I have seen
statistics of total new births "this year" in news stories etc... The
numbers must be out there in some census recording or something...