"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
"Jay Honeck" wrote in
news:cEt9e.3672$WI3.540@attbi_s71:

It's the relative PROPORTION of pilots, aircraft, and airports that is
out of whack in France.

It's probably similar to most of Europe.

If aviation weren't dead in France, they
should have the same PROPORTION of pilots, aircraft and airports as
the US.

You fail to take several things into account. In North America, private
planes are a viable and often necessary method of transport because of
the distances and the lack of other transport methods in some areas.
This is not so in Europe, you can get anywhere by rail and/or road.


GA in the USA is also heavily subsidized by business aviation, airlines and
the general public. The total of all avgas taxes pay for a tenth of the
$600MM AFSS cost..


There's plenty of space in North America, and real estate is cheap. So
building an airport is cheap, and no problem to place it far away from
settlements whose inhabitants might complain or try to shut it down.
Not so in Europe, population densities are high by comparison almost
throughout the entire continent. Real estate is expensive, and wherever
you decide to build an airport, there's going to be someone around
who'll complain. These facts make airports expensive.

There are other factors which make aviation more expensive, some have
to do with regulation. Fuel is one of these factors because of
taxation, but not the only one and probably not the most important one.
The same price difference exists with petrol for cars, and we have no
lack of those here.

All these facts combined reduce private airplanes to "expensive toys"
in Europe, and they are viewed accordingly. But aviation exists, it's
not dead. Circumstances are just very different.

Regards

--
Now is ze time on Sprockets ven ve dance

http://www.wschwanke.de/ usenet_20031215 (AT) wschwanke (DOT) de