Comments on: Bragging Rights & The Future of Flight

By: John M. White

John M. White — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:24:22 +0000

I think the current trend to create a class warfare based upon income inequality is not helpful. I owned an aviation insurance agency for 30 years and insured a lot of very wealthy people, but for the most part you would not have known it.

They were passionate about flying whether as a pilot or an aircraft owner, and were willing to spend time, money and effort to insure a safe operation.

As for the declining pilot population, it is scary. When I go to the local airports around here in Michigan there is no activity where just a few years ago they were busy with enthusiastic student pilots. It seems the young have lost interest in the adventure of flying airplanes.

By: Dane Boicos

Dane Boicos — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:22:40 +0000

Good story. I imagine Virgin Galactic space flights to substantially decrease over the years. Just look at the costs of flying in the early days? It was reserved for the rich and famous. Now, anybody with a thousand bucks and a passport can can travel abroad! For what it’s worth, I have written a post at my blog about Virgin Galactic.

http://www.planespot.net/2012/09/virgin-galactic-from-pipe-dream.html

By: Greg Morris

Greg Morris — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:13:41 +0000

Scott,

What data are you using to come to your conclusion about “rich people”?

Your math is not correct regarding the active pilot population. 500,000 / 311,000,000 = .0016 or .16%. That is about half of the historical highest fraction of the population with active certificates, which we saw in 1980 with 800,000 active pilots, about .35% of the population.

Greg Morris

By: Scott Spangler

Scott Spangler — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 21:21:18 +0000

Greg, I won’t deny that your customers, regardless of their income, are dedicated to their aerial passion. But unless you have several thousand such students lined up at your hangar, they are the exception to my generalization, which I attempted to qualify with “for the most part.”

In the similar vein, the steadily declining number of active pilots stands a bit more than a half million, and compared to the entire US population, they are the exception to the rule as well. If I’ve done the math right, they are .oo1 percent of the population. That’s not even a rounding error.

Scott

By: Greg Morris

Greg Morris — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:15:21 +0000

I have to strongly disagree with the statement that “for the most part, rich people don’t invest the time and effort needed to truly accomplish something hard, like climbing Mount Everest or flying a plane. They hire someone to take them there by the hand or in the back seat.”

At Gauntlet Warbirds we train people with diverse income brackets and all levels of net worth. There is absolutely no correlation between either of those measures and somebody’s work ethic or the energy they put into flight training.

Greg Morris
Chief Pilot
Gauntlet Warbirds