What is happening to us?

Everskyward said:
Dunno but it's nothing new. It was like that when I was 29 and that was a LONG time ago! :goofy:
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I even get frustrated with the 99s -- the women's pilots group -- a group I am only associated with as a spouse. The group down here in South Texas is nice enough, but do they FLY? Wouldn't you think they might do occasional fly-outs?

We attended their Christmas party, and had a nice time, but it seemed like Mary was the only truly active pilot, which was sad. There were a couple who were current, barely, and several who were "retired" from flying.

Argh. Where are the young women this group purports to support?
 
Jay Honeck said:
I even get frustrated with the 99s -- the women's pilots group -- a group I am only associated with as a spouse. The group down here in South Texas is nice enough, but do they FLY? Wouldn't you think they might do occasional fly-outs?

We attended their Christmas party, and had a nice time, but it seemed like Mary was the only truly active pilot, which was sad. There were a couple who were current, barely, and several who were "retired" from flying.

Argh. Where are the young women this group purports to support?
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Pretty sure, just like many other national organizations, the characteristics of the 99s are chapter-dependent. In thinking about it, there are more younger members now than when I joined and it's not just the perspective of being part of the older group now. But I think most of the younger ones are aiming for pilot careers and don't necessarily have the money to fly around socially. I am guessing about 1/3 are active pilots. I know that they occasionally try to organize fly-outs but I'm not sure how much success they have had.

I'll say that most (all?) of the scant time I've spent as the designated passenger in small airplanes in the past 10 years has been with people from POA. :)
 
Jay Honeck said:
I even get frustrated with the 99s -- the women's pilots group -- a group I am only associated with as a spouse. The group down here in South Texas is nice enough, but do they FLY? Wouldn't you think they might do occasional fly-outs?

We attended their Christmas party, and had a nice time, but it seemed like Mary was the only truly active pilot, which was sad. There were a couple who were current, barely, and several who were "retired" from flying.

Argh. Where are the young women this group purports to support?
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Honestly? They don't exist.

Ours is truly a family avocation, something I'd love for other households to embrace in the same way I'm blessed with having a wife who supports it. In my experience, women simply don't find the avocation as desirable as men do. There's social and cultural reasons for that. There's nothing wrong with that, unless you have a feminist agenda that is.

The female pilot contributors on this site, if they are genuine, could probably allocute to the level of social marginalization they face amongst their female peers when it comes to their vocational choices. Not male peers, FEMALE peers. Perhaps they could speak genuinely to the even more pointed alienation when it comes to the mating choices of the men they desire, who pick non-pilot women as mothers and life partners over those who choose to pursue flying professionally and how that ultimately shapes the demographics of a largely-male activity. Voilá, self-fulfilling prophecy. None of this equates to men exercising vocational obstructionism upon them, lest you accuse me of forcing my wife to sit in the back of the airplane for fear she might gain interest in becoming a pilot.... And I'm gonna digress on that one before the pitch forks come out. I'm just a messenger. :lol:
 
One thought: Like most traditional "membership" organizations, most are full of geezers... younger folks "meet" virtually online first, then in-person, and rarely have a formal "organization" around it.

If you want to be bored to death by old pilots used to the old ways... attend a regularly scheduled in-person meeting of any aviation organization. It's not limited to the 99s... or EAA...

Now that I've been at it just under two decades, usually there's one or two people younger than I at any particular "meeting"... maybe three. I pretty much stopped going to stuff after getting the distinct feeling I was at a nursing home at a holiday dinner for a very wide-pilot-swath type organization here a few years ago.

The traditional organization meetings are generally a waste of time. Both for the reason that you're always the youngest person in the room, and also because stuff we learn about here on PoA finally makes it to one of those meetings about six months to a year later...

"Hey, check out this new thing called an iPad!"...

PoA and other online folks, see 'em at OSH, see 'em at a fly-in, or if I ever had real vacation time, make an effort to go fly to their town and have dinner...

The time-line compression with PoA vs. the general not-online pilot population is amazing... not at a "meeting" per-se, but we set up a lunch at Perfect Landing one time with a few pilots who really aren't "online" folk... by the end of lunch I really wanted to punch the professional pilot (nice guy, but...) who kept showing me his iPad and ForeFlight after I'd been flying with it for YEARS... he couldn't get it through his head that it wasn't something NEW to me... or anyone else... but him.
 
hindsight2020 said:
The female pilot contributors on this site, if they are genuine, could probably allocute to the level of social marginalization they face amongst their female peers when it comes to their vocational choices. Not male peers, FEMALE peers.
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:confused:

In my experience, my female peers care less about what I do for a living than males care about what other males do.

hindsight2020 said:
Perhaps they could speak genuinely to the even more pointed alienation when it comes to the mating choices of the men they desire, who pick non-pilot women as mothers and life partners over those who choose to pursue flying professionally and how that ultimately shapes the demographics of a largely-male activity. Voilá, self-fulfilling prophecy.
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I think this is totally backward. I know many female pilots who are married or in relationships and I get the feeling that the ones who aren't, aren't interested.
 
Dav8or said:
I don't think that's it. Only a tiny percentage of aircraft owners actually work on their planes. Most drop them off for service just like their cars. This has always been the case.
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Right. I was thinking out loud and not making a very good point on paper.

What I was trying to convey is that a lot of people maybe more so than in the past are not mechanically inclined like they used to be.

When we were teens with our first cars, we did all sorts of things to them. Even rebuilding engines and doing everything we could to save a buck. I just don't here young people talking about cars mechanically like we did. If you don't understand how a machine works, it would be kind of scary to me where aircraft are concerned. :redface:
 
txflyer said:
Right. I was thinking out loud and not making a very good point on paper.



What I was trying to convey is that a lot of people maybe more so than in the past are not mechanically inclined like they used to be.



When we were teens with our first cars, we did all sorts of things to them. Even rebuilding engines and doing everything we could to save a buck. I just don't here young people talking about cars mechanically like we did. If you don't understand how a machine works, it would be kind of scary to me where aircraft are concerned. :redface:
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I'm mechanically inclined, but there's only so many hours in the day. And I was forced by necessity to learn back when it was fix [insert item here] or you can't afford to fix it.

Nowadays I have to weigh the time vs time needed to make the money to have someone else fix it and decide.

Sometimes my time is worth it, sometimes not. Sometimes the time learning how to fix it deals the deal, but YouTube has changed that quite a bit. You can find a video on how to fix most anything on there now.
 
txflyer said:
Right. I was thinking out loud and not making a very good point on paper.

What I was trying to convey is that a lot of people maybe more so than in the past are not mechanically inclined like they used to be.

When we were teens with our first cars, we did all sorts of things to them. Even rebuilding engines and doing everything we could to save a buck. I just don't here young people talking about cars mechanically like we did. If you don't understand how a machine works, it would be kind of scary to me where aircraft are concerned. :redface:
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Might be scary if the new hot rodders attempted to work on airplanes(WTF same ignition system as a lawnmower) point is there are still people hot rodding their cars. New cars. You need a laptop to start, and swapping out electrical components is as likely as mechanical ones. Lots of cool and clever stuff going on. Men fooling with machinery is not cultural and not going changeable in a couple of decades. Choice of machinery will of course change.
 
Everskyward said:
:confused:

In my experience, my female peers care less about what I do for a living than males care about what other males do.

I think this is totally backward. I know many female pilots who are married or in relationships and I get the feeling that the ones who aren't, aren't interested.
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I don't really have a dog in that fight. We can just agree to disagree on that particular point. The point I wanted to stress is this: As long as we can agree men are not the reason women participate in flying to a meager 10% or less of the population, and in much less proportion to the general female population, I think we can say we are in agreement. :)
 
denverpilot said:
I'm mechanically inclined, but there's only so many hours in the day. And I was forced by necessity to learn back when it was fix [insert item here] or you can't afford to fix it.

Nowadays I have to weigh the time vs time needed to make the money to have someone else fix it and decide.

Sometimes my time is worth it, sometimes not. Sometimes the time learning how to fix it deals the deal, but YouTube has changed that quite a bit. You can find a video on how to fix most anything on there now.
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Good point.

I guess what I can't get out good with words is if I didn't have a clue how an engine worked, or how brakes work, or anything at all like that, I would be scared ****less of an airplane.

GA is in trouble from a combination of things. Not knowing anything about mechanics could be one of them was all I was forwarding .... :dunno:
 
ClimbnSink said:
Might be scary if the new hot rodders attempted to work on airplanes(WTF same ignition system as a lawnmower) point is there are still people hot rodding their cars. New cars. You need a laptop to start, and swapping out electrical components is as likely as mechanical ones. Lots of cool and clever stuff going on. Men fooling with machinery is not cultural and not going changeable in a couple of decades. Choice of machinery will of course change.
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This is a good point. There is still a lot of hot roading going on, it's just different than the hot rodding of years past.

Here in the LA area - admittedly a car crazy area - a lot of people are making newer electronics laden cars do cool things. This includes not only engine mods, but also chassis mods.
 
hindsight2020 said:
I don't really have a dog in that fight. We can just agree to disagree on that particular point. The point I wanted to stress is this: As long as we can agree men are not the reason women participate in flying to a meager 10% or less of the population, and in much less proportion to the general female population, I think we can say we are in agreement. :)
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I might be female but I have never been one to worry and fret about the low numbers. In this day and age women know that all doors are open to them. There is a slight cultural barrier but no more than men face when they want to get into a traditionally female occupation.
 
Everskyward said:
I might be female but I have never been one to worry and fret about the low numbers. In this day and age women know that all doors are open to them. There is a slight cultural barrier but no more than men face when they want to get into a traditionally female occupation.
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I'm retired now, but I faced a few of those cultural barriers when I became an RN in the 1970s. There were many times when I was the only male working on my unit and, at that time, I was almost always identified by patients' family members as "that male nurse." Now, when I visit the unit where my daughter works as an RN, I see many more Y chromosomes evident. Perhaps aviation is still going through the type of differentiation, wherein passengers will still comment that their flight had "a female pilot."
 
hindsight2020 said:
I don't really have a dog in that fight. We can just agree to disagree on that particular point. The point I wanted to stress is this: As long as we can agree men are not the reason women participate in flying to a meager 10% or less of the population, and in much less proportion to the general female population, I think we can say we are in agreement. :)
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Hmmm. I'm not sure about that.

I have a unique perspective on this issue. I spend half of my time flying in the back seat of an RV-8, with my wife piloting in the front seat. I see EXACTLY the reaction she gets, wherever she goes. It's not always respectful, and it's not always appropriate.

Example: All last year, whenever Mary flew into Port A, if the skydiving guys heard her on the radio, one of them would ALWAYS say "No girls allowed!".

Now, the first time was funny. The fifth time was just aggravating. It's the kind of stuff that isn't going to keep Mary from flying, but it MIGHT turn off a girl on her first lesson?

Ironically, there are several girls in the skydiving group.

When we go into the FBO, it is usual and customary for the person behind the desk to ask me if I need anything. Many times, I just shrug and say "She's PIC", and point at Mary.

Do I know if we need gas? Sure? But they minimize her by asking me, and that ticks both of us off. IMHO, these are the sorts of behaviors that keeps girls from learning to fly.

That said, most of the time people are properly amazed and respectful when my wife slides the canopy back and they see that the pilot of this Red Rocket is a GIRL. Personally, I don't think there's anything hotter than a chick pilot, but I am prejudiced, I know. :)
 
Dennis McKim said:
I'm retired now, but I faced a few of those cultural barriers when I became an RN in the 1970s. There were many times when I was the only male working on my unit and, at that time, I was almost always identified by patients' family members as "that male nurse." Now, when I visit the unit where my daughter works as an RN, I see many more Y chromosomes evident. Perhaps aviation is still going through the type of differentiation, wherein passengers will still comment that their flight had "a female pilot."
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I may have told this story before, but I would sometimes fly an air ambulance with a male flight nurse. We picked up an older gentleman who had had a heart attack and his wife. The wife kept looking back and forth at us then said to the nurse, "I can't get it through my mind that you are the nurse and she is the pilot". The nurse came back with, "Ma'am, I don't think you want her working on your husband and you sure don't want me flying the airplane."
 
Everskyward said:
I may have told this story before, but I would sometimes fly an air ambulance with a male flight nurse. We picked up an older gentleman who had had a heart attack and his wife. The wife kept looking back and forth at us then said to the nurse, "I can't get it through my mind that you are the nurse and she is the pilot". The nurse came back with, "Ma'am, I don't think you want her working on your husband and you sure don't want me flying the airplane."
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:lol: :rofl: :goofy:
 
Where I work, there are four folks with licenses. Two are women, though one's been running the ol' onboard 3D printer and doesn't have the time/money.

Ron Wanttaja
 
txflyer said:
Good point.



I guess what I can't get out good with words is if I didn't have a clue how an engine worked, or how brakes work, or anything at all like that, I would be scared ****less of an airplane.



GA is in trouble from a combination of things. Not knowing anything about mechanics could be one of them was all I was forwarding .... :dunno:
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I wouldn't be. But the more I think about it the more I'm convinced if I hadn't started originally on a path toward commercial aviation and gotten through the Private rating at 19, or whatever I was, there's no way I'd be convinced at my age (with money but not a lot of time) to start flight training. Never would have happened. I'd be pulling a boat behind the 5th wheel. Seriously.

Once you get hooked young and manage to figure it how to pay for it all when dead broke, you might stick around or come back after eight years off like I did. But convincing any of my friends my age to do the power rating? No.

One single guy who just turned 40 that I've known since we were turning 30... And I now work with again... Got the gliding bug and is having a ball with that. But he thinks the price tag on the stuff with engines is insanity. He's somewhat glider shopping now and joined a higher end club with some nice gliders.
 
Dennis McKim said:
I'm retired now, but I faced a few of those cultural barriers when I became an RN in the 1970s. There were many times when I was the only male working on my unit and, at that time, I was almost always identified by patients' family members as "that male nurse." Now, when I visit the unit where my daughter works as an RN, I see many more Y chromosomes evident. Perhaps aviation is still going through the type of differentiation, wherein passengers will still comment that their flight had "a female pilot."
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First post.....

Welcome to POA...:cheers::cheers:
 
denverpilot said:
I wouldn't be. But the more I think about it the more I'm convinced if I hadn't started originally on a path toward commercial aviation and gotten through the Private rating at 19, or whatever I was, there's no way I'd be convinced at my age (with money but not a lot of time) to start flight training. Never would have happened. I'd be pulling a boat behind the 5th wheel. Seriously.

Once you get hooked young and manage to figure it how to pay for it all when dead broke, you might stick around or come back after eight years off like I did. But convincing any of my friends my age to do the power rating? No.

One single guy who just turned 40 that I've known since we were turning 30... And I now work with again... Got the gliding bug and is having a ball with that. But he thinks the price tag on the stuff with engines is insanity. He's somewhat glider shopping now and joined a higher end club with some nice gliders.
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Same here. Certificated when I was seventeen, flew for four years, got married and impregnated her, and it was game over for twenty years.

Didn't get back into flying until the child support ended. :lol:
 
RalphInCA said:
This is a good point. There is still a lot of hot roading going on, it's just different than the hot rodding of years past.
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Yup, we used to mess with carbs and ignition timing and such. Kids these days are downloading new tunes on their laptops and re-flashing the ECU's, etc.
 
I don't get it. Where there lots of kids turning up to fly down at the airport back in the '60s and '70s? Were they all buying planes back then? It seems to me that the kids, meaning under 30, that were flying back then were the same ones that are now. Kids with relatives that have planes, or kids with rich parents that foot the bill.

Flying has always been expensive and the huge majority of kids never could afford it no matter what era. I know I never could back in the '70s and '80s. That's why it's mostly an old man activity. It takes time to get that kind of disposable income.

Why are we always talking about kids in threads like this?? They are not the issue it seems to me.
 
Dav8or said:
I don't get it. Where there lots of kids turning up to fly down at the airport back in the '60s and '70s? Were they all buying planes back then? It seems to me that the kids, meaning under 30, that were flying back then were the same ones that are now. Kids with relatives that have planes, or kids with rich parents that foot the bill.

Flying has always been expensive and the huge majority of kids never could afford it no matter what era. I know I never could back in the '70s and '80s. That's why it's mostly an old man activity. It takes time to get that kind of disposable income.

Why are we always talking about kids in threads like this?? They are not the issue it seems to me.
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The majority of student pilots in this country are under 30. The largest group is those 20- 24: http://www.faa.gov/data_research/av...l_airmen_statistics/2013/media/Air12-2013.xls
 
The median household income in the early-70's was around $8K/yr. The 172 of that vintage sold for around $16K or so if I remember the data correctly (all much before I was in this world). Today, median household income is around $50K, and the 172 runs $300K. Flying has certainly gotten much more expensive as a percentage of annual income, more-so than the general inflation of most other activities. Most people simply can't afford it, especially young people with very little disposable income early in their careers.

I really wish people would let go of the "video game" excuse. It's tired, cliche, and frankly unfounded. There were video games when I grew up, too, but I still had plenty of other hobbies. To be honest, I've never owned a video game console after the original Nintendo, lol. Unfortunately for me, I'm one of the likely many on the aviation boards who flies a dozen hours or less per year because I have many other hobbies that consume my time/finances. Boats, auto racing, recreational sports, etc. all vie for my time and money, so flying gets a small allocation.

Lack of aircraft availability is one of my biggest problems, and there are no rentals or flying clubs with a 182 or similar payload for rent so that I could take family or friends anywhere. Lots of reasons why GA has been in decline, the least of which is "young kids and their video games".
 
cowman said:
Most young people I know can't really afford it or at least would have a hard time finding room in the budget. If they could they'd be renting or in a club...

Then consider for a family of 4 + full fuel & bags for a few days is going to be very close if not over gross weight on the most common 4 seat GA planes.

Oh it's expensive.

Also, it's a gigantic pain in the butt. Takes darn near a year for most people to get a PPL and somewhere around $8-10k. Unless you're wanting a career, you are probably going to want the airplane for going places. So now VFR you finally launch with your family towards a vacation spot.... a day late because low ceilings. Then when you get there after spending 4x more on fuel than the car would have cost you rent a car. You have your fun, then it's time to home but.... noooope it's overcast 800 so we're stuck for another day. Then the next day it's supposed to be VFR in the morning so you go to the FBO and turn in your rental car. Oops still no go, but it's supposed to clear up. So you sit in the FBO for 5 hours with your ****ed off family until the weather finally clears and go home... pay another massive fuel bill, etc.

Well ok that was a bad trip... next month wow a week of clear weather all over the country. You hop in and go, have a great time, get in the plane to go and... no start. Your magneto is dead. Oh and it's saturday and no mechanics will be around till Mon morning. Another 2 days stuck.... then $1500 in repairs later you can finally go home.

The point being with all the expense and effort and difficulty you have to REALLY want to fly.
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This:(
 
Dav8or said:
I bet the great majority are aiming to be airline pilots and of those, a large number are foreign students. Like I said, just like the old days. Mom and Dad paying the bills mostly.
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That plus the few we've heard from who started when they were young and had few expenses but quit for a long time when they started having adult responsibilities.

One problem is the after you learn then what? Most rental places have minimums per day so it's hard to go on trips. So the other choice is buying either a share or a whole airplane which is out of reach for many young people.
 
Renting sucks, but so does GA trips. The focus on trips is wrong. Need to sell and teach fun flying. Trips just means going to a better place in a different way. That way is an expensive, limiting, PIA. Want more pilots sell the people in the first photo on the fun in the second photo. Goes against every ideal and product Flying mag sells, but that stuff ain't fun and it ain't cheap.
 

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ClimbnSink said:
Renting sucks, but so does GA trips. The focus on trips is wrong. Need to sell and teach fun flying. Trips just means going to a better place in a different way. That way is an expensive, limiting, PIA. Want more pilots sell the people in the first photo on the fun in the second photo. Goes against every ideal and product Flying mag sells, but that stuff ain't fun and it ain't cheap.
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Istn't this exactly what Icon was/is trying to do? Cross a Jet Ski with an airplane?
 
SoonerAviator said:
The median household income in the early-70's was around $8K/yr. The 172 of that vintage sold for around $16K or so if I remember the data correctly (all much before I was in this world). Today, median household income is around $50K, and the 172 runs $300K. Flying has certainly gotten much more expensive as a percentage of annual income, more-so than the general inflation of most other activities.
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While this is true for new planes, it is still quite possible to get a REALLY nice used airplane for $70K.
 
Jay Honeck said:
While this is true for new planes, it is still quite possible to get a REALLY nice used airplane for $70K.
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No doubt, but the boating industry doesn't thrive on getting people to buy 30-40 yr old boats. They get a lot of people into the activity by offering new boats at many different price levels. Used boats are always available, but the industry hasn't priced itself out of the reach of the recreational boater. It's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison as boating and GA aren't exactly synonymous due to some barriers to entry, but the concept rings true.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Used boats are always available, but the industry hasn't priced itself out of the reach of the recreational boater.
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They're getting close. A decent new boat for the family is $40-50K. The result is sales are going lower and lower. The boating industry has the same discussions as we do. "How can we get costs down??" Limited production just costs a lot of money and people are having less and less money.
 
Fredbob711 said:
GA may not be exciting for the passengers, but I think there are more than enough people that would find it exciting to be the pilot. I think the problem is money, and while more people flying more often would probably help, I don't think it will solve the problem.

Basically you have wages for the vast majority of the population barely keeping up with inflation over the last 10-15 years (standard raise in Corporate America is now 3% at best for rank & file workers) and you have a disposable income activity whose cost is rising far faster than the rate of inflation. People don't have much disposable income any more, and there are easier, less stressful, more cost efficient ways to spend that disposable income.

For flying to become more popular, you'd have to find people who not only have a passion for it, but also the financial means & discipline to make it work. Unfortunately those people aren't very common in the U.S. anymore.
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Of course the problem is money. If we did GA in a more efficient manner that allowed exploiting the potential of GA fully it could be a whole lot cheaper and productive.
 
Henning said:
Of course the problem is money. If we did GA in a more efficient manner that allowed exploiting the potential of GA fully it could be a whole lot cheaper and productive.
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GA has a affordable avenue in the Experimental arena... IMHO..
 
N801BH said:
GA has a affordable avenue in the Experimental arena... IMHO..
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Not really. The whole 'individual ownership' model for GA is a very limiting one. Large fleets of one way airplanes through a nation wide 'club'. With composite manufacturing you tool up for 5 different models from aerobatic trainer to a pressurized medium twin with a 7 pax cabin. When you join you buy a fraction of the planes you want to fly, which gives you access to one anywhere in the fleet. I figure 6-7:1 owners:planes would be workable and keep the planes working.

With this model you actually start wearing planes out reasonably quickly so the manufacturing end can ramp up some. The key lies in the Diesel recip gain in efficiency. It actually makes GA a pretty decent MPG value.

The main cost in GA comes from the inefficiency of the market. Basically it only attracts those who love flying and are willing to make sacrifices to do it. The biggest inefficiency in the market is underutilization. The main cause of underutilization is not cost, but practicality. GA is not really a practical way to travel, especially if you need to be somewhere for a while. This is mostly because we have such a disparate infrastructure.

The ability to fly one way and drop the plane off on the other side of the state or country, go do your thing while the plane serves the next person to somewhere else, and when it's time to go home, you grab another plane and head that way. Required repositioning can be coordinated with training flights to defray costs. This way you only pay for the plane while you are using it. All the infrastructure costs are already included in your hourly costs.

The catch to this method is it requires a lot of people involved to make work well, and to get those numbers, you will have to have planes that are capable of autonomously getting to the ground survivably. We actually have the technical ability to affix 'auto land' technology, and with BRS as a backup, a new life could come to GA. I always thought Cirrus might do it. There were a couple of fractional operations out there with them, but the markets were too limited to really be able to go the full route, and it's one of those 'all or nothing' things to make work.

I'm interested in seeing how the Chinese are going to implement GA.
 
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