Are Instructors retiring and not being replaced?

[jackc]

On 13/3/2023 at 11:17 AM, Student Pilot said:

Last time I saw an RAA instructor he was charging $150 an hour, I think he should have used a mask when instructing like a burglar.

Flying School training for RAA?   Some are charging in excess of $300 per hour.  WHY?  Because they want to use expensive, well equipped aircraft.  They say most students want flash aircraft, well that has now priced many out of the RPC.

RAA has lost its foundations as being a member is getting expensive, more and more fees and charges.  Low budget flying has ended 😞 

[turboplanner]

If you look at any business from your own little dunghill, it will always appear that you are losing the good talent you've mixed with for decades and the industry is becoming less understandable, going to the dogs, not like it used to be, will extinct etc.

 

People comment about their own local area, which may well be going bad, but they don't live in or visit other States and districts which are booming.

 

Take a look at the size of the terminal in the small town of Roma way out in Western Queensland; Aviation is booming there.

 

Although Soar Avation went belly up beause of its policies, its marketing strategy was almost right and look at the numbers or aircraft and airports that they operated out of.

 

If you're one of the only people in step, the army might be going where the action is. Look at the RAA numbers.

 

They're all just flying at other places and talking in other groups.

[johnm]

19 hours ago, facthunter said:

f the game.  Expecting the rules to be brought in I ended up losing a lot of money I couldn't afford to because they backpedalled  and reneged.  (CASA) I'm over it.   Nev

Heard you say that once before FH

 

I'm curious to know the circumstance if you care (of course I (we) understand if you decline)

 

?

[RossK]

12 hours ago, BrendAn said:

That must have a while ago for that price.  

 

2018 Actually.

Rates here are pretty good -

Lilydale Flying School

Do your lessons mid-week in a Vixxen, my equivalent training (27hrs) would be $5160 using todays rates.

No affliation, just received good training from them IMHO, at good rates.

[Thruster88]

Cost would be similar at Cowra aero club. We probably are not charging enough to allow for aircraft replacement in future. Flying training is not a gold mine.

[BrendAn]

1 hour ago, RossK said:

2018 Actually.

Rates here are pretty good -

Lilydale Flying School

Do your lessons mid-week in a Vixxen, my equivalent training (27hrs) would be $5160 using todays rates.

No affliation, just received good training from them IMHO, at good rates.

that is good. bairnsdale is very good, only 1 plane and instructor though so he gets pretty busy. i pay $250 p/h there. he is an l4 and maintains his aircraft which helps him keep the cost down.

Edited March 15, 2023 by BrendAn

[facthunter]

johnm It was all caused by McCormick with his total unacceptance of a home built plane at any level.  All progress at that point was reversed without any concern for the people who were involved who had made commitments. Nev

[Student Pilot]

8 hours ago, turboplanner said:

If you look at any business from your own little dunghill, it will always appear that you are losing the good talent you've mixed with for decades and the industry is becoming less understandable, going to the dogs, not like it used to be, will extinct etc.

 

People comment about their own local area, which may well be going bad, but they don't live in or visit other States and districts which are booming.

 

 

Yes there are exceptions that are going ahead. I have traveled a bit and Mostly I see places shut down or shutting down. GA is in a steep decline and has been for the last 25 years or so. I have friends in a few different areas/states that also say that.

RAA seems to be clinging on still, nowhere near the interest or aircraft there was 25 years ago. I suppose the real decline in wages and income (Compared to inflation) over that time has a big part in it. Also the changing of the want/dynamic of RAA is compounding the decline. Now an RAA aircraft cost about the same as a 182 did 25 years ago. A Rotax 912 now cost what an 0-520 used cost to overhaul 25 years ago. There are still basic cheap flying machines but seems the average price of any new machines be it composite or metal is way over $100,000. No way an average man on wages can afford to learn to fly let alone own an aircraft.

[spenaroo]

yeah,

cost is a huge factor.
I'm 31, and haven't flown in 3 months due to rise in cost of living.

 

doing tail wheel endorsement. which I was aiming to fly every 2 weeks ( and mostly achieved last year)
at $300 for an hour, I need to dedicate $150 a week on a $1000 salary - means 15% of my earnings

flying every 2 weeks I reckon doubles the time it takes to get the certification - but constricted by financial means.

pretty hard to justify that with my mortgage repayments increasing almost 40% in 12 months

flying is not a young mans game. imagine if I had a wife or children

not hard to see why it has the reputation as an older gentleman's pursuit

Funnily enough I remember training at Lilydale and you would see all the young teen boys being dropped off by the parents,
with the girls in horse gear to go riding. seemed to be a common theme as the equivalent "male hobby"

Edited March 16, 2023 by spenaroo

[turboplanner]

6 hours ago, Student Pilot said:

Yes there are exceptions that are going ahead. I have traveled a bit and Mostly I see places shut down or shutting down. GA is in a steep decline and has been for the last 25 years or so. I have friends in a few different areas/states that also say that.

RAA seems to be clinging on still, nowhere near the interest or aircraft there was 25 years ago. I suppose the real decline in wages and income (Compared to inflation) over that time has a big part in it. Also the changing of the want/dynamic of RAA is compounding the decline. Now an RAA aircraft cost about the same as a 182 did 25 years ago. A Rotax 912 now cost what an 0-520 used cost to overhaul 25 years ago. There are still basic cheap flying machines but seems the average price of any new machines be it composite or metal is way over $100,000. No way an average man on wages can afford to learn to fly let alone own an aircraft.

1. How many members of RAA are there today? Not much point discussing where Recreational flying is today without the figure.

 

2. You're crossing into GA. Nothing wrong with that but the two types of flying are different.

     GA flying used to be primarily cross country. Today it's far cheaper to go to the same place by RPT.

 

3. The heyday was a false boom caused by the promotion of light aircraft as aerial cars. As the complexities of flying - flight planning before the flight, refuelling at stops, limite number of passengers, turn backs or enforced stay-overs due weather and the cost to remain current bit, some drifted into recreational flying, some ursued other hobbies, so there was  big drop off in GA, and there was also a drop in GA Commercial because of the limitations of light aircraft operations.

 

4. Having said that there are still thousands of GA aircraft flying around Australia. The current 295,000 movements per year of Moorabbin pretty much kill the doom and gloom merchants; a few historic totals are:

1965, 257900

1968, 321251

1969, 240574

1981, 270419

1995, 347000

1996, 350000

2004, 220900

2007, 310322

 

Points 2 & 3 haven't had much influence on total movements which fluctuate more when an Arthur Schutt or Bib Stillwell come along or someone starts a mass-training deal.

 

With Recreational flying those member numbers tell the story - I'm surprised no members have bothered to put up current figures.

[BrendAn]

22 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

1. How many members of RAA are there today? Not much point discussing where Recreational flying is today without the figure.

 

2. You're crossing into GA. Nothing wrong with that but the two types of flying are different.

     GA flying used to be primarily cross country. Today it's far cheaper to go to the same place by RPT.

 

3. The heyday was a false boom caused by the promotion of light aircraft as aerial cars. As the complexities of flying - flight planning before the flight, refuelling at stops, limite number of passengers, turn backs or enforced stay-overs due weather and the cost to remain current bit, some drifted into recreational flying, some ursued other hobbies, so there was  big drop off in GA, and there was also a drop in GA Commercial because of the limitations of light aircraft operations.

 

4. Having said that there are still thousands of GA aircraft flying around Australia. The current 295,000 movements per year of Moorabbin pretty much kill the doom and gloom merchants; a few historic totals are:

1965, 257900

1968, 321251

1969, 240574

1981, 270419

1995, 347000

1996, 350000

2004, 220900

2007, 310322

 

Points 2 & 3 haven't had much influence on total movements which fluctuate more when an Arthur Schutt or Bib Stillwell come along or someone starts a mass-training deal.

 

With Recreational flying those member numbers tell the story - I'm surprised no members have bothered to put up current figures.

there are about 11000 members and 3000 aircraft , 

[BrendAn]

25 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

1. How many members of RAA are there today? Not much point discussing where Recreational flying is today without the figure.

 

2. You're crossing into GA. Nothing wrong with that but the two types of flying are different.

     GA flying used to be primarily cross country. Today it's far cheaper to go to the same place by RPT.

 

3. The heyday was a false boom caused by the promotion of light aircraft as aerial cars. As the complexities of flying - flight planning before the flight, refuelling at stops, limite number of passengers, turn backs or enforced stay-overs due weather and the cost to remain current bit, some drifted into recreational flying, some ursued other hobbies, so there was  big drop off in GA, and there was also a drop in GA Commercial because of the limitations of light aircraft operations.

 

4. Having said that there are still thousands of GA aircraft flying around Australia. The current 295,000 movements per year of Moorabbin pretty much kill the doom and gloom merchants; a few historic totals are:

1965, 257900

1968, 321251

1969, 240574

1981, 270419

1995, 347000

1996, 350000

2004, 220900

2007, 310322

 

Points 2 & 3 haven't had much influence on total movements which fluctuate more when an Arthur Schutt or Bib Stillwell come along or someone starts a mass-training deal.

 

With Recreational flying those member numbers tell the story - I'm surprised no members have bothered to put up current figures.

a lot of those morrabbin movements would be the international students doing touch and goes all day, hardly represents flying in the rest of australia.

[Student Pilot]

Turbo, do you (or any of your family) now work or have you ever worked for CASA?

[turboplanner]

4 hours ago, Student Pilot said:

Turbo, do you (or any of your family) now work or have you ever worked for CASA?

(a) No

(b) What on earth does that have to do with the number of healthy young RAA members becoming Instructors?

[turboplanner]

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

a lot of those morrabbin movements would be the international students doing touch and goes all day, hardly represents flying in the rest of australia.

I mentioned the fluctuations and what they were.

It wasn't meant to represent the rest of Australia; for one reason or another aviation will collapse where there is no interest or where the providers aren't managing their businesses to bring in businesses; plenty of McDonalds have disappeared, but less than the new ones. In the transport industry plenty of branda have fallen out of the market to be replaced by new ones and plenty of non-performing dealers fail every year to be replaced by new ones.

 

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

there are about 11000 members and 3000 aircraft , 

On this site around 2010 - 2015 you'll find plenty of comments about the RAA membership of 8,000, then just before the Limited compny was formed it had grown to 10,000, so your comment indicates healthy growth for RAA. 

 

That doesn't mean growth everywhere. As I outlined above, plenty of people in business don't adverstise, don't market, or their margin breaks what their market can afford, and people walk away, and maybe they're walking away from the people bad-mouthing the industry, but those numbers indicate more people are coming in than are leaving.

[BrendAn]

In our area Traralgon is the only other airfield with training apart from the 1 instructor at Bairnsdale. Of the the 2 schools at Traralgon .1 lost an instructor last year and they haven't got a replacement that I know of and the aeroclub just lost an instructor but I think they may have a replacement. So as others have posted . Training is a struggle in the regional areas.

[RFguy]

And quality of instructors, like all industries varies enormously. 

 

I've flown with about 4 instructors : 

 

There is teaching the basics, which any 25 yo flight instructor can do.

And then there is teaching airmanship, something I have only felt well communicated by the older folk. 

 

glen

[johnm]

RE RAA member numbers

 

I tired of the incessant financial commitment owning a plane so sold it and built a ...................

 

When my RAA aircraft rego lapsed RAA rang me and said 'rather than paying the incessant $ 200 rego fee per year - you can be a non flying member ?' - think that's the term ........... and was only $ 35 per year 

 

So when you say 10,000 members - there's probably lots of deadwood in that number 

 

[onetrack]

Quote

there are about 11000 members and 3000 aircraft

Of that 3000 aircraft, how many are actually flying regularly, and how many are dust-gathering hangar queens? The mustering/station industry must be the major component of RA-Aus.

[jackc]

Just now, onetrack said:

Of that 3000 aircraft, how many are actually flying regularly, and how many are dust-gathering hangar queens? The mustering/station industry must be the major component of RA-Aus.

But many of them fly unlicenced  and unregistered?

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, BrendAn said:

In our area Traralgon is the only other airfield with training apart from the 1 instructor at Bairnsdale. Of the the 2 schools at Traralgon .1 lost an instructor last year and they haven't got a replacement that I know of and the aeroclub just lost an instructor but I think they may have a replacement. So as others have posted . Training is a struggle in the regional areas.

RAA Inc. could have fixed that. The Members had much more direct power.

It's interesting that just  a few dozen members pushed RAA into the independent Limited organisation it is today, and one of the reasons, used over and over and over again to get votes was that we were getting too big for an Incorporated Association because it was like a cricket club. It's ironic that the top section of the cricket club system today earn multi millions per year working in Australia for the season then places like India where they REALLY make money - some structure!

Under RAA INC, you could have raised that as an issue and formed a committee of Key skills to run a recruiting programme form a Club and train Instructors, Maintenance supervisors, etc to provide the training and build the numbers.

 

Apart from that aspect, just going back to your raw numbers for Traralgon, that's pretty much the point I've been making. I don't think there will ever be an even, natural, progression across Australia at any one time; the situation is dynamic, based on someone being interested in Instructing and entrepreneurial enough to set up a profitable operation.

 

Earlier I showed a photo of the huge Roma, Qld terminal.

 

Roma today has a population of 6,840.

Traralgon today has a population of 26,907.

If you add local towns of Morwell, 14,389; Moe, 9,373; Churchill, 4,568, that's a local district of 55,237 people.

 

Interestingly, when I pulled these population figures for towns this morning, none provided total population; all provided total male and total female; that's what we've come to.

 

As many of you know, your local instructor is making a living off much tinier towns than that, so Traralgon is what we would call in marketing a Primary Opportunity, and we would be working it over and reporting on the progress every month.

 

As for the proposition that aviation is declining in the country districts:

 

In the early 1960s the Nhill Aero Club in Western Victoria had one Tiger Moth.

 

Nhill today has a population of 2401, which back then may have been around 1,500

Naracoorte, SA, today has a population of 8,690, back then around 5,000 including the surrounding "district".

 

Nhill employed one instructor. They couldn't make it pay just at Nhill, so the instructor would fly the Tiger to Naracoorte once a month to train his bookings. Distance is 144 km, 78 Nm - about an hour's commute for the Tiger. Many people today commute that far every day and think nothing of it and nor did the pilot then.

The club had a network of various airfields in the small towns which they supported so in quite a large area of the Western District and South East, you could travel 15 mins to 30 mins to your lesson.

 

That was a financial model that produced many pilots over many years.

 

Notice that the Club was marketing orientated; they went to the customers; they didn't try to get the customers to drive hundreds of kilometres to their lessons. Note that the Club organised the business and the Instructor did the flying - living the dream.

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[trailer]

8 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Quote

3000 aircraft

Of that 3000 aircraft, how many are actually flying regularly, and how many are dust-gathering hangar queens? The mustering/station industry must be the major component of RA-Aus

I suspect you are on the money here. I know of numerous 

 hangars that have dusty, unused, unserviceable aircraft that have RAAus rego current. Probably simmilar in may locations.

[turboplanner]

6 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Of that 3000 aircraft, how many are actually flying regularly, and how many are dust-gathering hangar queens? The mustering/station industry must be the major component of RA-Aus.

The mustering/station industry is a myth.

Way back in 1959 the Melbourne Porsche dealer, Norman Hamilton, designed and built quite a nice looking small aircraft for station inspections and mustering called a Jackeroo. It cost way less than the entry level Cessnas and Pipers, but sank like a rock in the market.

Inspection used to be feasible for broken pumps and empty stock troughs, but these days each watering site has solar powered reporting to satellite, and cameras if you want them, so you can do stock counts from the office, check on a particular animal. 

Some cattle are scared out of inaccessible outback gullies by aircraft and  mustered by helicopter, but the market these days has very specific demands on stock handling which limits the number of aicraft and helicopters. Having said that, the number of suitable properties is very small.

 

 

 

 

[turboplanner]

35 minutes ago, jackc said:

But many of them fly unlicenced  and unregistered?

You've mentioned this many times but apart from being pointless because of the potential legal issues and penalties these aren't in your 11,000 members and 3000 aircraft.

 

If you go down that path your could look at the 50,000 who are gunna go flying, just haven't had time etc.

 

[jackc]

3 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

You've mentioned this many times but apart from being pointless because of the potential legal issues and penalties these aren't in your 11,000 members and 3000 aircraft.

 

If you go down that path your could look at the 50,000 who are gunna go flying, just haven't had time etc.

 

Members of a limited company who regulate us all, AND then ask for donations…..

Sorry, I will hold my opinion until the day I die, reckon I have ten years left to get all my illegal aviation sh1t done 🙂