Student Drop-Out Rates...why?

Flying is boring to the generation that has been raised on action
filled TV, movies, and video games.
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.

In article ,
Jose wrote:
Are you any different? You stopped at one engine. All this noise about
trailers at Oshkosh and you are still flying a slow, single engine
airplane with a growing family. What is keeping you, who love aviation
so much, from getting a twin rating and buying something that can
acutally =haul= the stuff you want to take to OSH along with six
friends, and at three hundred knots to boot, icing be damned?


Huh? I don't see how flying a twin or a single relates to Jay's
question at all. Jay's question deals with why people who have an
initial interest in flying apparently lose interest, not why someone who
flies a Cherokee doesn't run out and buy a Baron. By your measurement,
I guess the only people who love flying are those who can afford to
prance around in Gulfstream Vs.

I do agree with your observation about the romance of flying--I think
that flying is one of those things that is now taken for granted, even
demanded, by the public. It is no longer respected as it once was.

I agree with your observation about the commitment--to remain proficient
and safe, so that flying is truly useful, you have to commit to flying
on a regular basis. This takes discipline that many aren't willing to
provide just so that they can take the family away once or twice a year.

For families, I think that financial commitment is a big issue. Both
adults have to see the value in flying and be willing to sacrifice other
things in order to do it. There are quite a few husbands with an
interest who have less enthusiastic wives. Who is going to willingly
strain a personal relationship over something so unimportant in the big
picture?

Personally, I don't think those pilots who learn to fly because it's a
rich kid's hobby, or so they can boast to their neighbors, do the rest
of us any good, and I'd rather that they not set foot in an airplane at
all.


JKG

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 11:38:46 GMT, kontiki
wrote in ::

We need to do more as a group to encourage the younger generation.

Imagine being a young person today faced with the high cost of
automobiles, ever increasing cost of insurance and gasoline, and the
astronomical cost of a home, and then you'll realize why adding the
cost of aviation instruction and operation is totally out of the
question for the vast majority.

You'll notice I've not mentioned the Number One reason people
mention for quitting: Money.

That's because it is indeed the number one reason. Or, more precisely
- flying does not offer good value for the money. Most students quit
once they realize this. The ones who don't are a handful of aviation
addicts - the kind of people who will tell you that flying is life, and
everything else is just details. Those people will always find a way
to fly, and little things like being shuffled between CFI's,
disorganized and often incompetent instruction, and airport snobbery
won't stop them - just like it didn't stop you, or me for that matter.

If we're ever going to get more pilots in quantity, we need to attract
a demographic other than "will go to any lengths to fly, regardless of
what it costs or what sacrifices must be made." Right now, that's
pretty much the only demongraphic we're attracting.

Flying is expensive. You mentioned that getting a private license is
no more expensive than a semester at college. This is questionable -
it depends on the college - but in any case, a college degree these
days is job training, not something you do recreationally. There are
as many kids learning to fly as ever, shooting for a career in
aviation. They're not dropping out unless they just totally run out of
money or discover that's not what they want to do for a living. But
for someone who is college-age and not going for a career in aviation,
flying is just too expensive a hobby. Wrong demographic.

So let's revisit the Harley thing again, since that's the demographic
we're going for. Someone willing and able to shell out big bucks for
an expensive and dangerous toy is indeed the person we're looking for.
For the price of a brand-new loaded Harley, you can get an old
ragged-out two-seater. Your cost of ownership for the plane will be
ten times what it is for the Harley. Is the plane ten times more fun?
Is it ten times more useful? You're losing students who realize that
for a fraction of what they're spending on aviation, they coud be
having more fun on a Harley.

Aviation will recover when (a)
You can buy a brand new, ready-to-fly, two-seat airplane with a
reasonable warranty and service plan for what a new Harley costs, and
have comparable operating costs, and (b)
The bull**** factor associated with aviation falls off to what it is
with a Harley, and the fun factor comes up to what it is with a Harley.

I'm somewhat hopeful that (a) will happen under the LSA rules. When I
was in the Keys, I saw a two-seat UL trainer on floats. It was open
cockpit (very open), and had a Rotax engine and Dacron-sailcloth
covered wing, but it was $25K new. Sell it as an LSA at that price and
people will buy it. It also comes in a landplane version.

As for (b), we need a change in attitude.

I met an avid scuba diver and business owner who could afford an
airplane, and actually went up with a friend of his on a lesson. The
process of walking around the plane for 10 minutes with a written
checklist, and then spending 5 more minutes in the plane reading a
checklist, was enough to turn him off. I routinely get a twin
preflighted for IFR and launched in less time than that, and they were
just going on a local day-VFR flight in a Cherokee. We need to
understand that if we're going to attract the Harley demographic, that
kind of bull**** is unacceptable.

For that matter, the whole fascination with rules has to stop. We
don't religiously follow every traffic law in our cars (and god knows
it doesn't happen on motorcycles), and we certainly don't spend hours
debating the fine points of what it and is not legal. Why should this
be acceptable with airplanes? The Harley demographic is not going to
stand for it.

How would the motorcycle community react to a rider who turned in one
of their own to the police for a traffic violation? Or even suggested
that it might be OK to do? Do riders worry about what's actually legal
- or just what they can get busted for? Why is it different for
airplanes? It doesn't need to be. Motorcycles are loud, they're
dangerous, but the biggest restrictions placed on bikers are helmet
laws - and even this is far from universal. They don't police their
ranks, but they have something we don't - they have numbers. That's
much more useful. If policing our own ranks costs us numbers (and it
does) then it's counterproductive to keeping aviation alive.

So bottom line - if you want to see fewer people dropping out, we need
lower costs and fewer rules. Otherwise, we're going away.

Michael

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:36:32 -0400, RNR
wrote in ::

you cannot remove cost from the analysis. It is probably the
most significant factor.

I have no idea if the cost of flight training is still covered by the
GI Bill, but it was a strong motivating factor in the past. The
problem was, as I recall, that only those instruction costs beyond the
Private Pilot certificate were covered. If there was a loan program
in place to cover the initial training costs, it might motivate more
veterans to become pilots.

I don't see how flying a twin or a single relates to Jay's
question at all. Jay's question deals with why people who have an
initial interest in flying apparently lose interest, not why someone who
flies a Cherokee doesn't run out and buy a Baron. By your measurement,
I guess the only people who love flying are those who can afford to
prance around in Gulfstream Vs.

The point is that in both cases, somebody who is attracted to aviation
goes "just so far" and then is satisfied. Jay doesn't understand how
this can be so. For the person who is satisfied by having mastered
enough to solo, he's happy in a way that Jay doesn't understand, because
he has the drive to go further. But Jay too has "stopped"... albeit at
a different place. The reasons that Jay has for stopping are reasons
that Jay understands, since they are =his= reasons, despite the
arguments I've given for continuing on.

My point is that the reasons on both sides and in both places may well
be the same, differing only in perspective. For example, despite the
usefulness of the higher performance aircraft, maintaining currency in a
twin is a commitment, twins cost significantly more to operate, they
operate out of fewer fields, and all these look sneakingly like the
arguments against airplane flight over highway travel for somebody who
thought flying would be =so= handy.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

unicate wrote:

Nearly everyone that "hangs out" there, socializes there, flies
together for *fun* outside of training, is at least 40 and up, and the
40-60s are the "younger" ones.

That isn't a problem. As long as new 40-year-olds keep showing up to keep the
population steady.

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.

His point is that all people decide to stop progressing at some point. He
used Jay as an example of someone who stopped progressing at single engine,
fixed gear VFR flying. Others may stop at solo. I don't see much of a
difference between stopping at solo or at PP.

Mike
MU-2


"Jonathan Goodish" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jose wrote:
Are you any different? You stopped at one engine. All this noise about
trailers at Oshkosh and you are still flying a slow, single engine
airplane with a growing family. What is keeping you, who love aviation
so much, from getting a twin rating and buying something that can
acutally =haul= the stuff you want to take to OSH along with six
friends, and at three hundred knots to boot, icing be damned?


Huh? I don't see how flying a twin or a single relates to Jay's
question at all. Jay's question deals with why people who have an
initial interest in flying apparently lose interest, not why someone who
flies a Cherokee doesn't run out and buy a Baron. By your measurement,
I guess the only people who love flying are those who can afford to
prance around in Gulfstream Vs.

I do agree with your observation about the romance of flying--I think
that flying is one of those things that is now taken for granted, even
demanded, by the public. It is no longer respected as it once was.

I agree with your observation about the commitment--to remain proficient
and safe, so that flying is truly useful, you have to commit to flying
on a regular basis. This takes discipline that many aren't willing to
provide just so that they can take the family away once or twice a year.

For families, I think that financial commitment is a big issue. Both
adults have to see the value in flying and be willing to sacrifice other
things in order to do it. There are quite a few husbands with an
interest who have less enthusiastic wives. Who is going to willingly
strain a personal relationship over something so unimportant in the big
picture?

Personally, I don't think those pilots who learn to fly because it's a
rich kid's hobby, or so they can boast to their neighbors, do the rest
of us any good, and I'd rather that they not set foot in an airplane at
all.


JKG

All good points but a huge difference between flying and riding a Harley is
the amount of time from when you start spending money until you start having
fun. Americans, at least, are not very interested in delayed gratification.
Consumer products that require reading the manual before use usually flop.

Mike
MU-2


"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...
You'll notice I've not mentioned the Number One reason people
mention for quitting: Money.

That's because it is indeed the number one reason. Or, more precisely
- flying does not offer good value for the money. Most students quit
once they realize this. The ones who don't are a handful of aviation
addicts - the kind of people who will tell you that flying is life, and
everything else is just details. Those people will always find a way
to fly, and little things like being shuffled between CFI's,
disorganized and often incompetent instruction, and airport snobbery
won't stop them - just like it didn't stop you, or me for that matter.

If we're ever going to get more pilots in quantity, we need to attract
a demographic other than "will go to any lengths to fly, regardless of
what it costs or what sacrifices must be made." Right now, that's
pretty much the only demongraphic we're attracting.

Flying is expensive. You mentioned that getting a private license is
no more expensive than a semester at college. This is questionable -
it depends on the college - but in any case, a college degree these
days is job training, not something you do recreationally. There are
as many kids learning to fly as ever, shooting for a career in
aviation. They're not dropping out unless they just totally run out of
money or discover that's not what they want to do for a living. But
for someone who is college-age and not going for a career in aviation,
flying is just too expensive a hobby. Wrong demographic.

So let's revisit the Harley thing again, since that's the demographic
we're going for. Someone willing and able to shell out big bucks for
an expensive and dangerous toy is indeed the person we're looking for.
For the price of a brand-new loaded Harley, you can get an old
ragged-out two-seater. Your cost of ownership for the plane will be
ten times what it is for the Harley. Is the plane ten times more fun?
Is it ten times more useful? You're losing students who realize that
for a fraction of what they're spending on aviation, they coud be
having more fun on a Harley.

Aviation will recover when (a)
You can buy a brand new, ready-to-fly, two-seat airplane with a
reasonable warranty and service plan for what a new Harley costs, and
have comparable operating costs, and (b)
The bull**** factor associated with aviation falls off to what it is
with a Harley, and the fun factor comes up to what it is with a Harley.

I'm somewhat hopeful that (a) will happen under the LSA rules. When I
was in the Keys, I saw a two-seat UL trainer on floats. It was open
cockpit (very open), and had a Rotax engine and Dacron-sailcloth
covered wing, but it was $25K new. Sell it as an LSA at that price and
people will buy it. It also comes in a landplane version.

As for (b), we need a change in attitude.

I met an avid scuba diver and business owner who could afford an
airplane, and actually went up with a friend of his on a lesson. The
process of walking around the plane for 10 minutes with a written
checklist, and then spending 5 more minutes in the plane reading a
checklist, was enough to turn him off. I routinely get a twin
preflighted for IFR and launched in less time than that, and they were
just going on a local day-VFR flight in a Cherokee. We need to
understand that if we're going to attract the Harley demographic, that
kind of bull**** is unacceptable.

For that matter, the whole fascination with rules has to stop. We
don't religiously follow every traffic law in our cars (and god knows
it doesn't happen on motorcycles), and we certainly don't spend hours
debating the fine points of what it and is not legal. Why should this
be acceptable with airplanes? The Harley demographic is not going to
stand for it.

How would the motorcycle community react to a rider who turned in one
of their own to the police for a traffic violation? Or even suggested
that it might be OK to do? Do riders worry about what's actually legal
- or just what they can get busted for? Why is it different for
airplanes? It doesn't need to be. Motorcycles are loud, they're
dangerous, but the biggest restrictions placed on bikers are helmet
laws - and even this is far from universal. They don't police their
ranks, but they have something we don't - they have numbers. That's
much more useful. If policing our own ranks costs us numbers (and it
does) then it's counterproductive to keeping aviation alive.

So bottom line - if you want to see fewer people dropping out, we need
lower costs and fewer rules. Otherwise, we're going away.

Michael

All good points but a huge difference between flying and riding a Harley is
the amount of time from when you start spending money until you start having
fun.

I'm not convinced that's true. I know that most people (at least in
Houston) who buy a Harley who have never ridden before take a course
that starts Friday evening, goes all through the weekend, and I think
there's some finishup Monday. That would be enough time to solo a
tri-gear LSA.

For those who really must have the one-day training course, there is
always the powered parachute.

Michael