Going back to the original issue about freshly-minted PPLs giving up soon after qualifying, one point that is common to many of the views expressed is money. Two or three of the previous poster have indicated that joining a cheap group was the saviour in their flying, and really this is the nub of a lot of the problems. The inability or unwillingness of Flying Schools to allow their post PPL’ers to take an aircraft at short or any other notice for a three day jolly, but only fly it for a couple of hours boils down to sound business practice; what is the margin in having an aircraft sit on the ground at Le Touquet for three days after an hours flight when it can be in the air say six hours a day doing training, trial lessons or hour long PPL hire – none at all.
The ideal solution if the three day trip is your desire would obviously be to own your own, but that means costs.
Another reason covered above include the frankly aged and crappy state of the large part of the UK GA fleet. Most flying school owner would be delighted to have a gleaming, well maintained fleet with no empty nav/comm. slots on the dash and perhaps a couple of a/c spare to cover unforeseen technical problems. In general, the only thing stopping them is the business economics of making enough money from the fleet to make it a viable proposition, and why, because the vast majority on GA want to fly on the cheap.
It matters not whether it is a club or school, cheap hire rates result only in shabby old aircraft. Untill the GA community starts to put its’ collective hand in its pocket and pays sensible rates for quality aircraft the fleet will remain as it is, old and shabby.
Despite all the other laudable reasons set out in the thread, the reason most PPL’s give up is because they cannot afford to continue in the way they would like, because the aircraft are not available in the way they would like at a price they would like. With the possible exception of horsiculture, I cannot think of any other fundamentally expensive hobby that so many hope to pursue with so little.
If someone can come up with a way of providing good quality aircraft, at low cost and “go when and where you like” availability there must be a few quid in it. Until then it’s business as usual.
