Not really – the upper middle class is smaller even though there’s a lot more billionaires. And billionaires in general aren’t hobby pilots.

I wonder what percentage of billionaires are pilots - probably decently high.

It’s the doctor segment that is probably way down, or holding steady.

The cost compared to the 1960s seems to be much higher. Even for "people with money".

It really isn't though. Yes, the GA fleet is extremely old, but the inflation-adjusted cost of a PPL is pretty much exactly what it was in the 1960s.

Inflation adjusted wages aren't.

Median per capita inflation adjusted income has steadily risen since WW2 https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-tr...

It feels like it hasn’t because of real estate and other baseline things that have inflated a lot.

There's a secondary issue that in a lot of places the sky is a lot more crowded and the airports are very crowded.

I wanted to be a pilot. I took lessons in the 1990s at a small field, relatively uncrowded, relatively low cost. I stopped due to weather/money.

When I tried again after I finished college where I lived things were more expensive and the airspace was so crowded you would run up costs waiting in line to take off, and the whole thing was much more stressful.

It has to be fun, in a busy enough environment it becomes stressful enough fewer people want to fly.

I learned to fly in Southern California literally under the bravo umbrella - wait time was never significantly bad (maybe $20 of “time”) and I has substantial radio/tower/airspace experience by the time I got my PPL.