Why do people stop flying?
I was just reading my acro-group postings and was reminded about why
many people drop out of flying completely... friends crashing and dying!
It is mostly associated with people with less than five years in the
sport. Their thoughts being that, "Wow! So-and-so has all these hours
and years of experience in aerobatics, yet, they still crashed! What
chance do I have?"
I personally know of one pilot, a young guy with small kids, who's
mentor crashed and burned. The never flew his Pitts again. I cannot
prove it, but I think his wife gave him an ultimatum. Although she had
her PPL, she never seemed really comfortable around the acro crowd.
Those that have been around longer know the causes (99.9% pilot error)
and are confident enough in their own abilites to not repeat the cause.

Another thing about the five years and out in acro flying.
Some people get into the sport for the thrill.
They have the time and money to get the training and buy the highest
performance acro mount of their choice. Did I mention that many of them
are low time (couple hundred hours)? They have gotten their PPL,
Instrument and Commercial and are looking around for their next aviation
challenge.
Acro is something that you either have a natural ability for, or you
spend many hours and years developing the talent. The ones that drop
after five years have plateaued out at Intermediate or Advanced. They
want to show that they have big ones, that they can compete in
Unlimited! That's why they bought the biggest, badest acro mount to
begin with, right?
They blew through Sportsman the first year, didn't always win, place or
show, but thought they flew well enough.
Second and maybe third year, they did okay in Intermediate. Again,
doesn't matter how well they did, they have an airplane that is capable
of flying the higher catagory maneuvers, so why not move up?
Advanced is where it starts to really get tough. Two or three years at
Advanced and they are not progressing or just botching every other
maneuver. It's getting embarassing! Time to get out. So they just
disappear, on to something that will give them their next big high or
ego boost.
By the way, if you haven't learned it yet, ego will kill you in aviation!