Strafer
It's an interesting point as to why so many qualified PPLs drop out of aviation - but I think the 3 main reasons are money, money & money
I don't believe in that - simply because anyone with enough of a brain to pass the PPL exams is capable of working out the costs. And if they choose not to care, that's their problem; they had ample opportunity.
I reckon about 75% of "dropouts" can be easily explained: they did it as a personal challenge (or to prove to others they can do it). One doesn't have to hang around the training scene for long to see this. Same in the USA, where costs are far lower.
The remainder get caught by the fact that VFR flight (and PPL training is far too basic to be good enough for anything more than CONSERVATIVE VFR flight) is very limiting in the UK. One can come up with various incentive schemes (group fly-outs etc) but these get boring for most people who have a normal life because the flying social scene is full of anoraks. Most people will drop out after a few months no matter what you do, due to the c**p social scene. Perhaps another 20%. Actually I think there are lots of reasons why this group gets decimated; anoraks is one, money is another, c**p planes is a big one, lack of confidence in navigation...
This leaves a few, very few out of the original trainees, who are
1) happy to just potter around (on a nice day) in a self fly hire spamcan doing easy flights, or
2) they decide to really go for it and throw a vast amount of time and money at it, get the ratings and get a decent plane and they end up going places and they DO enjoy it long-term
I ended up in group 2) but I would not wish it on anybody. To do this in a training industry which is firmly geared up for the "95% group" is a pretty frustrating experience. For a start, most instructors have never been anywhere, so who do you ask if you want to go somewhere far?
There is probably a very small group 3) which is self fly hire pilots who do get pretty adventurous, VFR.
I have the book somewhere and when I've read it I will reply to the original post
