Decreasing Pilot Population - Why?

Many recent pilot news stories have focused on the issue of a dwindling pilot population as many WWII era pilots pass on with few young people filling their spots; many are struggling to figure out how to enable more to join the ranks while also keeping current pilots active.  The FAA estimates the total number of active airmen in 1999 at 635,472 compared to only 590,349 in 2008, a decline of 45,123 pilots in only 9 years.  Those numbers are especially staggering when you realize that decline is occurring as population overall is continuing to grow. What is especially dissapointing is that there seems to be a large audience of people who would love to become a pilot but remain unable to pursue the dream.  If you attend just about any air show or Red Bull air race, you will see thousands of people in wide eyed wonder at the airplanes and the pilots who fly them, and no doubt almost every person in attendance is at that moment wishing they could themselves fly an airplane.  But the numbers are dismal.  Even if they do start training, many will never complete the flight training program.  Of all the people who start a flight training program, based on AOPA statistics, only 20% of them will end up completing the program.  In fact, I almost became one of the 80% that didn’t make it.  Let me back up a bit. . .

I can’t figure out exactly when I first caught the flying bug.  I remember going to the Castle Air Museum with my Dad as a kid, and I also remember going to the Seattle Air and Space Museum at some point, but I didn’t right away say “I’m going to become a pilot one day.” Not to say I wasn’t fascinated by airplanes – I still vividly remember sitting out in our backyard watching formations of jets that would fly low over our house during training flights out of the old Mather Air force Base. But becoming a pilot myself had hardly crossed my mind as it seemed like a thing you were only able to do in the military or as the hobby of wealthy old doctors. The first time I really thought about pursuing flight training is when I happened on a website with what seemed like a very reasonable estimate of training expenses.  The amount I saw was $4,985 making me think, well maybe flying isn’t just for “rich people.”  The cost seemed reasonable to me.

Fairly soon after seeing that number, all those memories of airplane museums, and jets flying low overhead suddenly came back to me but in every airplane I saw myself at the controls!! OK, maybe not exactly but the point is that a switch had been turned and I had to go for it!  I took out a loan for almost $8,000 wanting to be sure I wouldn’t run out of funds before completing the program and I also wanted to cover some of the other training expenses including charts, books, and a nice aviation headset.  So I started training at the beginning of August 2006 at a rate of two flights per week and was almost finished in December with only 2 – 3 weeks until my check ride when I ran out of funds.  That’s right, more than $3,000 over the advertised price and I wasn’t even done yet.  It took me until September the next year to pick up where I’d left off and after a couple months spent relearning material, I finally took my check ride on the 28^th of December 2007.  I earned my Private Pilots license with 65.1 hours and total training related expenses (including a $400 headset) of $10,465.97. 

Now, getting back to the point is that I was nearly a part of the 80% of people who never complete flight training. I was only able to finish the program because I put college student loan funds towards the training and was able to remain focused and determined to finish the program no matter what.  Now the cost of training on its own may not always be a major issue, as some have pointed out, many motorcycles cost that much and there are a lot of young people buying motorcycles.   The significant difference I see is that after you get a pilots license you don’t own an airplane, you don’t have 10k worth of flight credits available to go out and enjoy your new adventure toy, and in fact the average 4 seat airplane costs in the range of $95 – 115 per hour to rent making it a challenge to mindlessly enjoy on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  For more than two years after I earned my license I was paying $214 per month on my flight training loan meaning if I ever wanted to fly, I had to first factor in the flight loan, then add on the individual flight expense. For example, one of the shorter yet still meaningful flights I’ve taken from my home base airport in Davis, CA is the 2.1 hour roundtrip flight to the Half Moon Bay airport.  The Average Cessna 172 would cost around $220 to rent for that trip meaning a pilot in my situation would need to budget $435 that month for flying.  That may not be completely out of the question but Half Moon Bay is still one of the shortest destination flights one could possibly fly – making most destinations out of the average young persons budget until the flight training loan is taken out of the picture.

Let me generally recap the problem here: the pilot population is dwindling as WWII and even boomer pilots retire from the cockpit, even as wide eyed youth try to become pilots, only 20% of those who try will succeed, and of those who do become pilots, many will not remain current as airplane rental rates can be prohibitively expensive for anything more than quick local flights.  So maybe my youthful perception that flying is a hobby generally restricted to wealthy old doctors was more accurate than I would like to believe.  But I don’t think it needs to be so out of reach.

I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately and believe there are some reasonable solutions that will help to keep the spirit of adventure alive and within reach for a larger group of people. So decreasing pilot population is the issue, but what’s the solution?  On my next few posts I will try and actually address some of the problems with possible solutions.

 Talking points for the next post:

• How to create a flight training environment that encourages quality flight instruction that succeeds in graduating more than 20% of students.
• How to build a stronger support network for pilots who have recently obtained their license.
• Use modern business techniques of marketing to bring more pilots into the flight club while offering proper customer service to keep them coming back.
• Working with banks to offer more funding options for flight training.
• And the list goes on . . . for next time