So I was one of those statistics for 23 years.....
My Story (sorry, wall of text!)
Got my licence in 1987 thanks to a flying scholarship from the Air Cadets aged 18.
Due to a lack of "A" levels and a very minor medical issue that would have probably stopped me flying fast jets, my thoughts of going silly speeds for the RAF faded. Not having the £28k available to get myself on the BA Ab Initio scheme at that time also stopped me from pursuing a career in commercial aviation.
Kept my licence going (just) for 3 years flying club aircraft; just scraping in my (at that time) 6hrs per year doing friends and family local flights.. not even landing away (lack of confidence).. and some of that 6 hrs per year was of course check circuits with a club instructor due to the 30-day rule.
After those 3 years in September 1990 I bought my first property, with mortgage, and was immediately broke ... at least broke enough to not be able to fly.
My passion for flying never went away but went on hold.
Every year I would ask myself... "can I afford to go flying?" and every year I answered either a flat out "no" or "well maybe, but not much and there are other things I could/should spend the money on".
Then almost 23 years to the day since the last time I was PIC, I suprosed myself by answering "yes, actually I can, I want to and I will".
I went back to the flying club I originally trained with (one of only 3 clubs at the airport I flew from tht was still going out of about 8), got myself an instructor and took the plunge (hmmm.. bad expression here I guess!).
Since September 2013 I have:
- regained my licence. (CofE, whatever
)
- bought into a group aircraft
- done my IMC / IR(R) rating
- completed my night rating
- flown over 130 hours
Yup it cost me a lot of money, but boy have I had an excellent time and I fully intend to continue.
Of all the things I've done aviation-wise in the last 16 months, buying into a good group aircraft with at least one person that I fly with regularly has got to be the best decision I ever made.
He is a far more experienced pilot than me and I am learning all the time (I guess we all are really)... We go to airfields I'd never even heard of before and each time I visit a new airfield I learn something new (even if it's just their local procedures/noise abatement!).
I even had enough confidence to hire an aircraft whilst on holiday in Crete and after a check-flight with the school's instructor flew my wife around the Eastern hald of the isalnd one day in our first week and flew from Crete to Santorini in our second week... fantastic adventure.
Pleasure flying means different things to different people, but if I hadn't bought into the group aircraft I would probably already be getting bored with doing friends and family locals (and the odd away-day).
My general impression is that between 1987 and today GA activity has slimmed-down, diversified (many more microlights) and spread out from the licensed areodrome hubs to the farm strips (although I still fly from a licensed, "traditional", airfield).
But GA is definitely not dead yet and I now have many aviation friends of all ages, experince, aircraft types, airfields etc etc. But it does cost money and you need to think about how best to spend what you've got.
Each time I fly I can't help but realise how privileged it is to see the world from a different perspective.... so much so that I now volunteer for the Air Cadets to hoepfully give back something to an organisation that provided me the opportunity in the first place.
Sadly though, another of the adult volunteers at my Air Cadet Squadron who passed his PPL aged 23 last year has just had to take the tough decision to stop flying because he wanted to put the money towards his house-buying deposit fund and was struggling to keep interested doing friends and family local trips with the odd instructor circuit due to the 30-day rule at his club....
My comment to him.... "just wait 23 years and you'll be back!"