Number of PPL's in Europe?
 

Hi

Can anyone point me to where I might find out how many PPL's there are in the UK and Europe...?

I seem to remember reading an AOPA article somewhere which suggested even EASA had only a vague idea of the numbers for Europe, but only really need a broad figure.

I seem to remember a figure of 15,000-20,000 for the UK, but can't find the reference.

I notice the US figures for aircraft and pilots are very neatly organised on the AOPA-US website, to the nearest airframe and pilot for the last 80 odd years!

Cheers
BFA

A very difficult task as there is no single database likely to have this information. The CAA website includes UK statistics but it is slightly out of date and doesn't give the full picture. There are over 70,000 PPLs in the CAA records; but they have no real idea how many are actually in use, other than to count the number of valid medical certificates, the 2008 figures are about as close as you will get.

You would need to go through every Aviation Authority in Europe to see if you can find similar figures. The JAA had no records and EASA does not intend to either.

I wonder if the PPL stats only show those who do not also have CPLs/ATPLs.

I believe so, if you hold more than one physical licence it will simply show in the highest licence category as its based upon holding a valid medical certificate.

The number of PPLs (note: not PPL's - see here :) ) with current medicals is about 20k in the UK - the CAA have said so I believe.

Germany and France are (of the order of) the same size as the UK in the GA scene sizes, so that makes it say 60k for those 3.

I would bet anything that ALL the rest of Europe is less than those 3 countries combined i.e. perhaps 100k PPLs for all of Europe. Most of Europe has no real GA activity.

How come? The weather is sunnier in the south...

It's an extremely good question...

Greece - arguably the one country with the best economic case for GA, ss well as the best weather - has only about 200-300 PPLs. They are pretty active - far more active than the UK bunch - but there aren't many of them!

I think UK and Germany and France have loads because of historic factors going back to WW1.

Elsewhere, GA has had to fight a bit. Europe is not about individual freedom like the USA is. As a default position, Europe is basically a socialist State and thus personal freedom is an unwelcome concept.

And until ~ 20 years ago much of Europe was a military dictatorship - like most of the 3rd World.

Totally irrelevant but I found out a few days ago that Turkey has less than 50 PPL's which I thought was incredibly low, Considering Istanbul has a population of 17 million.

That's probably true and I think I met most of them when I flew to a fly-in at LTBH in 2009 :)

They are not exactly broke either - unlike the bulk of UK GA. It's pretty tough down that way.... 100% military control. Try GA in Israel (yes it does exist).

Not very relevant either:

Numerous people have an UK CAA license and fly/live in other parts of Europe (like myself), since they got theirs in the US through one of the JAA flight schools.

In that case the number of 15000-20000 UK PPLś is rather low. EASA (a JAA school formerly Ormond beach flight school) is claiming that they trained over 10000 pilots since 1991 (probably most of them JAA).

btw: I didn do my training with them

Actually quite relevant. I believe you are correct, a significant number of UK/CAA license holders don't live in the UK. Goes for CPL and ATPL as well, btw.

JAA didn't commence till 1999! Numerically, I guess that would make them the biggest JAA school in existence.

Slightly of topic, but if anyone is interested in the number of commercial pilots plying their trade in Europe and beyond, then this could help:

LPcompliance1

Some interesting reading here. According to the Flight Standards department of the CAAC, in 2008 China had 8,600 commercially-rated pilots operting internationally, out of which 936 failed to demonstrate Level 4 English langauge proficiency. Call me a cynic, but I would have thought 10% was a little on the low side. More realistic (and alarming) is the near 50% failure rate of Controllers obtaining Level 4.

Regards, jez

Yes, Italy has a big (what I call ultralight) scene. They have about 300 strips, just for that. Not on the maps, and presumably with mogas.

Regarding GA, one has to realise Italy is basically Africa when it comes to legal and corporate transparency, and a local, with "connections", can do stuff a foreigner never could. I flew to Sardinia recently and some of the stuff I saw done locally I would have never dreamed of doing. It makes flight planning somewhat interesting.

AFAIK no country south of the Alps/Pyrenees has any real GA. Slovenia (at LJLJ) had some training activity, and most of the GA going down the Adriatic is Germans etc popping over the Alps for lunch :) Spain has a bit of GA, but all these places are less than 1/10 of the UK.

No. of PPL's in UK & Europe....
 

Well, thanks everyone for replying and creating what has become a really interesting thread!

Has been very useful for my research.

What it does highlight is the dramatic difference in PPL population density across Europe. And the difficulties of trying to arrive at reasonably accurate figures when PPL's are not differentiated out or there are different local conditions, such as in Italy.

No-one's mentioned Eastern Europe - is the active high-end ULM market there reflected also in a high number of PPL's? Or are there operating on sub-EASA national licencing, a la NPPL?

I certainly hadn't thought about the historical perspective on this before, which was interesting....

Grist for the mill.

Cheers
BFA

To add to the off-topic excursion:

@Silvaire, my limited impressions of Slovenia are much the same as yours. Wealthy Germans make up a good part of the traffic at LJPZ Portoroz, for instance - even though I drank wine there for 0,50€ per glass, just a couple of years ago. LJMB Maribor had few foreigners, yet a fair amount of G/A was going on there, and the hangars, including one or two newly built, were well stocked.
Certainly the Slovenians are finding their own middle of the European road, might well be the way to go.

@IO540: perhaps there is a difference between Northern and Southern Italy. I've never been to the South, but Northern Italy has quite a lot of G/A; check Cremona Migliaro for one busy aerodrome - with an excellent restaurant, by the way. And the aeroclub at Venegono even boasts a twin! Not to mention the hydroplane club at Como, one of the very few of its kind in Europe, if not the only one. Actually Northern Italy reminded me much of Austria, no surprise considering history.

One thing is striking, though, as one travels South: less and less glider activity.

Slovenia is a beautiful country and the people are very nice, modern-looking and economically enterprising, without apparent internal racial tensions, and I am sure they will do very well.

They never really fitted into "old Yugoslavia" and they got out of it at their first opportunity.

They don't have to look very far to see how one can mess up a country, do they?

Italy is a corrupt and barely functioning mess, with a farcical PM to top it off. It will need a substantial re-vamp to function for aviation - below the level of bizjets which manage to function everywhere by landing and a man jumps out holding a bundle of $$$$ with which he "lubricates" everybody to make sure he gets fuel, parking, and the boss in the back gets looked after (which is exactly why the world outside the USA is packed with £400-mandatory-handling airports). For piston GA, even working out who really has avgas is a nice job.

Croatia has managed to do quite well, is very well organised and should continue to benefit from tourism made possible by their beautiful coastline and islands (so long as they don't join the naked farce known as the EU) but they have a long way to go before they develop enough internal wealth to have a GA scene of their own. Most pilots landing there are from Germany and Austria, etc. The number of Croat pilots seems to be astonishingly low; someone recently trawled the FAA database for FAA licensed pilots and while this is not a great general statistic there were only about 4 in Croatia against thousands in UK/Germany. I have been there a number of times, nonstop from the UK to Losinj, Brac, Split etc. An aviation heaven in every way, though they have recently lifted fuel prices to "EU-duty-added" levels and are presumably pocketing the uplift locally ;)

Serbia I have never flown to but checked it out a few times and they seem to be progressing well to messing it up totally, with silly airport charges.

Albania (& around) you can forget.

Greece is an interesting case and can only get better :)

I think that is a big factor in GA. I don't know the rules bit I gather you have a choice of either

- an ICAO PPL but have to sit the English exams and pass an English RT test, or

- a local-only PPL which can be done in the local language, but you can't fly to any airport which has full ATC

Greece offers the above options, from what one pilot told me in June.

This will keep a damper on GA, in countries where English is rarely spoken, i.e. much of southern Europe. It also keeps a damper on touring, where the English speaking pilots (Brits, Germans, French, Scandinavia etc) have a big advantage. However few French pilots do any touring...

Wow! How weird. The weather is generally so much better down south.

Just imagine an Italian wanting to fly into the UK to visit relatives, say, in Kent. Here he goes, contacting all and sundry but only mastering his native language. What do YOU reckon his chances for finding out Lydd might be a more appropriate a/d for him than Biggin Hill, or where fuel is available?

Time and again I found myself regarded with distrust - at best - as a foreigner - until I turned up a few words of local language. Even my ONE word of Lithuanian (sveiki!) has literally opened closed doors.

And it happens in all directions. Spain is VERY closed to any non-Spanish speaker. Speaking German in France remains a good recipe for disaster. But I am sure IO540 would have had a lot less trouble in Italy when contacting them in their own lingo, either himself or through a local friend.

And don't come and tell me English has a special statute as being the language of aviation. Unless I am much mistaken, ICAO recognises French and Russian at exactly the same level as English.

Yes, we recently have the English Language Proffiency, yes. I still have to see actual progress made from there. The idea is not bad, but one can't change a mentality overnight.

Fully agree with you Jan. Just out of devilment, I'd love to arrive at a UK airport and do all the radio in French. Elstree, perhaps? :-)

But, in defence of the English (and I am one of them!) the English language does tend to be the " lowest common denominator" language. It's most peoples' second language.