The UK has around 23,000 PP about .04% of the population, Germany and France both have a similar percentage of the population. That said GA, compared with the US, is in a poor state in Europe.
I couldn’t agree more about inexperience and ignorance. I fully support pilots owning up when lost and agree it should be a rare occurrence.
Pilots should not get lost and if they are with the regularity WWW suggests there is a significant problem. If the problem exists then surely the root cause must be with the training. Yes, pilots are responsible for keeping up their own skill levels but if they are not doing so - why not? Either they are on the whole irresponsible (possible
) or the initial and re-occurrence training is not instilling in them a regime for keeping up their own skill levels. I am not bashing FI, simply debating how the problem might be fixed.
I suppose there is a third possibility which is that as a whole private pilots just do not fly enough to consistently ensure they will not got lost. If that is so, maybe we should accept the problem, BUT I would still argue the solution is in persuading pilots to own up when genuinely lost not claim it is a practice fix, rather than to make it illegal to ask for a practice fix unless there is a FI aboard. After all, however you describe them, their will still be the same number of calls to D and D unless their really are huge numbers of pilots using the service to make genuine training fixes! (which again if it is causing the problem suggested then FIs should persuade pilots not to make so many training fixes!)