At last, the truth...

GA is under pressure because of the misguided focus of anti-terror issues,
regulatory issues, (resulting in economic issues), etc. It will continue
to change, in some cases for the better (see the recent success of Cirrus
and the development of the GA glass cockpit), in some cases for the worse.
But the very small incremental change in pilot population that results
from "Be a pilot" programs really won't have much effect. Pilots have a
small and decreasing voice. That's just part of the landscape. But it is a
vast overstatement to say that GA is dying.

The pressure exerted on GA by anti-terror or regulatory issues is
insignificant compared to the damage being done to it by Father Time.

The pilot community is very old, and getting older by the minute. Already
most of the WWII generation has hung it up, and the Korean War generation
ain't far behind. Why do you think formerly busy little airports all over
the country are now nearly deserted? The guys who used to fly there are
"flying" walkers and wheel chairs nowadays.

Take a look at the "Gone West" page in EAA's Sport Aviation magazine every
month. It's astounding the number of members EAA is losing each month due
to natural attrition -- and there simply are not enough student pilot
start-ups to make up for the tens of thousands of post-war pilots who are
pushing up daisies.

GA is dying -- literally -- right before our eyes. And we are going to have
to get a whole bunch of young people interested in flying to keep this ball
rolling.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Check http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/trend.html for a quantitative
summary of trends. Private, commercial and instrument issuances are
down 12% since 2000. New aircraft shipments are down 10% since 2000.
Avgas sale is down almost 25% since 1999. OK, dying may be an
overstatement, but it is not looking rosy either. On the other hand,
this year's Airventure drew record crowds. I am not sure what to make
of that, but it is probably something similar to what happens in
spectator sports. Large number of people turn up to watch but very few
are able to participate.

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote:
On the other hand, this year's Airventure
drew record crowds.

Using their claims of attendance, and ignoring the fact that
they're bogus, the highest they've ever claimed is 855,000
"attendance-days" in 1998; this year it's stated as "nearly
700,000."

Fred F.

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
ups.com...
Check http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/trend.html for a quantitative
summary of trends. Private, commercial and instrument issuances are
down 12% since 2000. New aircraft shipments are down 10% since 2000.
Avgas sale is down almost 25% since 1999. OK, dying may be an
overstatement, but it is not looking rosy either. On the other hand,
this year's Airventure drew record crowds. I am not sure what to make
of that, but it is probably something similar to what happens in
spectator sports. Large number of people turn up to watch but very few
are able to participate.


Interesting....

Total Student Issuances
59,989
59,311
-1%
-678

Private Issuances
23,826
23,331
-2%
-495




If you use these numbers you would get a pretty good feel for the number of
people who start and then don't get their license. If only 10% of the
drop-outs were retained that would be more than 3600 more private pilots.

I'll argue that from two observations. First, not once in the last 33 years
have I seen the parking lots at the dorms with a single open space after
about 9:30 in the evening. This year they were at least 1/3 empty every
night.

Second, the traffic to get onto the field in the morning was nowhere NEAR as
congested as any other year.

Either they have stopped driving to Oshkosh or there were fewer people; I
suspect the latter.

Jim



"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
ups.com...


On the other hand,
this year's Airventure drew record crowds.

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
ups.com...
Check http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/trend.html for a quantitative
summary of trends. Private, commercial and instrument issuances are
down 12% since 2000. New aircraft shipments are down 10% since 2000.

On the other hand, there were more new private, commercial and (especially)
instrument pilots in 2004 than in 1997, and far more GA shipments in 2004
than in 1997. Yes, there was a spike in 2000 (just before the tech bubble
burst), but the overall trend seems more up than down.

Avgas sale is down almost 25% since 1999.

Maybe more pilots have learned how to lean the mixture.

--Gary

We are extremely complex creatures. An environmental factor here, an
unbalanced chemical there, a gene here and a personal encouter there -
all multiplied by thousaands throughout our lifetime makes each of us
unique. Trying to put a finger on a why is in my opinion an exercise in
futility. Find one piece of the puzzle and there are a million more to
go. But like you, Jay, when I get in that plane and take off on a dream
flight, it boggles my mind how so many can "not get it".
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.

"Jay Honeck" writes:

There's no mystery to me as to why not everyone loves aviation like we do
(or why some people love golf like I don't!).

Right. But these "near-pilots" DID love aviation like we do -- and
something spooked them to the point where they walked away.

Well...did he? Your specific example? As you said yourself, quitting
was essentially inconceivable to you, and you resorted to fairly
drastic means to pay for flying sometimes (you mentioned selling blood
plasma). You didn't report him saying anything suggesting his love of
flying was actually like yours.

If we are to replace all the World War II and Korean War-era pilots who are
dying in droves, we've got to get people into aviation, NOW. I address
this "scared straight" issue as just another small piece of the "Why is GA
dying?" puzzle, and hope that we (as pilots) can come up with better ways to
train newbies so that this kind of thing won't happen so often.

Note how many of the people taught to fly for those wars kept on
flying, either professionally or for fun, afterwards. Not, I believe,
a very high percentage.

I've been interested in flying forever, but I've never done anything
about flight training. I used to ride my bicycle over to Stanton
airport (from Northfield) now and then to watch (and sometimes
photograph) glider and skydiving operations, and anything else that
was going on there, when I was a kid. I made sure to get pictures of
the VC-10 we flew to Entebbe in in 1964.

I've got lots of other interests (notably photography) to absorb my
time and energy. And, perhaps, I figured out early some things about
how useful general aviation was for transportation (not terribly at
the basic level), and how much money it would cost. So I've read (and
now and then posted) to aviation newsgroups for years, go to aviation
events locally, talk to pilot friends, and so forth, but never started
training. I classified it as something cool which, if it was your
overriding obsession, somebody in my income range could do. And I
didn't think it was my overriding obsession.

Maybe I would have found out it *was* going to be my overriding
obsession if I'd taken some lessons or something, maybe. I've liked
what little time I have in smaller planes, but I've actually never
been in a single-engine fixed-wing plane, and only two GA-size twins.

If I won the lottery, I'm not at all sure I'd start lessons. The
lottery would dispose of any money issues, but there are still time
issues. Plus my interest is towards planes that would take a lot of
flying to maintain competence, and the lottery would put me in the
position of being able to easily afford more plane than I could
quickly learn to fly safely.

So, I'm still here as a reasonably-friendly onlooker rather than a
pilot, and I enjoy that.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/ Much of which is still down

Right. But these "near-pilots" DID love aviation like we do -- and
something spooked them to the point where they walked away.

Well...did he? Your specific example? As you said yourself, quitting
was essentially inconceivable to you, and you resorted to fairly
drastic means to pay for flying sometimes (you mentioned selling blood
plasma). You didn't report him saying anything suggesting his love of
flying was actually like yours.

Well, perhaps I'm reading more into it than I should, but:

- He chose to stay in an aviation themed hotel, right next to an airport...
(we're not the closest to the University, nor are we the cheapest)
- He was deep in study of our aviation memorabilia when I interrupted his
reverie...
- He avidly and animatedly talked about aircraft, displaying a breadth and
depth of knowledge far beyond our average "wannabe" guest...

I got the impression that aviation ran strong in his blood, but it was,
admittedly, a brief conversation. It did, however, stick in my craw, since
he was the first guy who has ever admitted to me that he was scared out of
the cockpit.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

It did, however, stick in my craw, since
he was the first guy who has ever admitted to me that he was scared out of
the cockpit.

And you should really take that as an indication that very few people are
actually scared out of the cockpit, instead of assuming (as the title of this
thread indicates) that the rest are simply lying about it.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.