Avgas in France has reached $7.50/gal !

In article 4UO9e.5395$r53.732@attbi_s21, Jay Honeck wrote:
Why is aviation in France statistically out of proportion with its
population, as compared with the US, if NOT because of cost?

Cost is certainly one of the most important factors, but I wager even if
avgas was tax free in France, you'd still not see the activity level you
get in the US (due to more reliable and cheaper methods of convenient
high speed transportation, and the shorter distances).

Case in point: aviation isn't really any cheaper in the Isle of Man, but
there are quite a lot of privately owned planes given our small (78000)
population - we have two active GA airports. This is because you can't
drive or take a fast train to Britain and Ireland's cities due to 60nm
of open water. Now compare League City, Texas, which has a population at
least as large as ours (if not larger) by now - which elected to allow
its only airport to have houses built on it, even though it could have
got 90% Federal funding for the airport.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Chris wrote:
IFR is not a big issue in Europe for the private pilot. So expensive IFR
systems like WAAS and GPS enabled approaches are irrelevant. Its interesting
that the much hailed Cirrus cannot fly IFR in much of European airspace and
in the UK its just a VFR machine.

That's due to assinine regulations put out by our "beloved" CAA. That's
why Cirrus airplanes in Britain are all on the N-register. Indeed, if I
was interested in buying an IFR plane, regardless of what it was (even
if it was a Diamond) I'd have it on the N register to avoid the stupid,
pointless CAA regulations that *decrease* safety, not increase it.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Montblack wrote:
I'm 100% serious, I wonder why this is? Almost no kids over 14 play soccor
here, unless they're on an organized team.

Probably because soccer is the most overrated sport in existence.

I also observed when I was living in the US, soccer tended to be a
girl's game - as did field hockey (to the extent that I read in a
newspaper a couple of years ago how a boy who wanted to play hockey had
to wear the girl's uniform, including a skirt, to play it...)

Which always seemed strange. Field hockey is a vicious game, I was
forced to play it at school and hated every second of it. The only
violent game I remotely enjoyed was rugby (even though I was crap at
it).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article KwZ9e.6991$c24.4078@attbi_s72, Jay Honeck wrote:
Now, the nearest kid my son's age lives several blocks away. I really feel
for the kid, cuz there just isn't any opportunity for him to play a pick-up
game of ANYTHING -- soccer, baseball, football, it doesn't matter.

Move to the city - then there'll be plenty of nearby kids. That will
always be a problem in a rural area. If you live in high-density housing
in a large city, there will always be random outdoor activities for
groups of kids.

Yet another reason kids are addicted to video games -- they can be played
alone. It's sad.

I play video games probably far too often - but seldom alone. We have
this 'intarweb' thingy that allows us to play with friends, and even
form communities, and have meetups with people not just in the same
city, but in different countries. My regular gaming friends live in
England, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, ping
times are too bad to the US, I'd like to be able to play games with
friends over there.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Not quite. The US gets about half of its supply from domestic sources.
France has practically nil domestic oil. Britain and Norway have some.

Britain is an oil producing country. It is a net exporter of oil
products.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Morgans wrote:

"Stefan" wrote
So, to summarize: Yes, there is fewer GA in Europe. But even if you
would wipe all avgas taxes, there wouldn't be more.

How do you come to that conclusion?

I suspect there would be a *slight* rise in GA activity - but when the
distances are short, IFR means icing and there's a good train service -
it generally doesn't make sense to use GA for anything other than
recreational purposes. Those who really want to fly for fun find a way -
many into soaring (and soaring in Europe isn't overall any more
expensive than it is in the US, and often it's a great deal cheaper due
to the prevalence of winch launching). If you converted every soaring
pilot to power tomorrow, it still wouldn't make France's GA activity
anywhere near as close as the US.

Case in point - even though our aviation isn't any cheaper than in
France, the activity level is much higher per head of populations - we
have two airports with GA for a population of only 78k, and a small but
vibrant GA community. That's because we don't have quite the level of
convenience in travel, due to 60nm of salt water. GA will get you much
closer to your destination in most cases than the airlines can.

In the US you have large distances between cities, poor intercity rail,
and generally not exactly great airline service (that has now become
even more of a rigmarole with the post-9/11 security) so business light
GA is a real going concern, which it will *never* be in France.

Delete all the avgas taxes in Europe and you
still wouldn't have much of a driver for business GA since the business
people can still do it faster, cheaper and more reliably on the train
due to the good rail network and closeness of population centres (and
the number of railway stations). Additionally, travelling by airline is
much more pleasant here - we are allowed to (shock horror) have nail
clippers on us, and don't have to have our ID checked three times, and
take our shoes off. (Last time I went through Houston Hobby for an
internal US flight, in Feburary of this year I had to:
1. take off my belt
2. take off my shoes
3. take my computer out of my bag
4. take my camcorder out my bag
5. a pre-screening before even reaching the metal detector
6. face a long line to get through the detector - long enough that I was
concerned that even though I'd turned up an hour before my flight, I was
going to miss it
7. show photo ID three times

I had to do the same thing at SLC when returning to Hobby too.

All these things are 'window dressing' security and don't help.
Generally for an airport in Britain, I have to do none of those things
in that list to get on an airliner. The only time I've had to show photo
ID was to collect e-tickets or get on an international flight (and in
the case of the e-ticket, it depended on the airport, some just want to
see the credit card you purchased the ticket with).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article hhO9e.5889$c24.2848@attbi_s72, Jay Honeck wrote:
If good trains are what is keeping people from learning to fly, I submit
that those folks never wanted to fly in the first place.

And if they wanted to fly in the first place, but couldn't afford power
flying, they'd fly gliders. Due to the prevalence of winch launching in
Europe, gliding is generally cheaper here than it is in the US.

Now let me grumble about the fscking delaminated spar in my Ka-8 :/

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , G Farris wrote:
You are correct!
The security situation on European high-speed trains is a catastrophe waiting
to happen, particularly in France, where their TGV is considered an icon of
national pride. Security has increased slightly, but it would still be
child's play for someone (anyone) to place a bomb in the luggage carrier of
one of these trains.

But why bomb the actual train? It's impossible to have 'airline'
security on a train. Put screening, metal detctors the works to board a
TGV - it won't help in the slightest, because the terrorists will just
put the bomb on the rails instead. A broken rail will really ruin your
day when you hit it at 225kph. So there's no *point* having
airline-style security on trains.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Morgans wrote:
Good Lord help us all! I suppose they will be made with China steel. That
is the softest, inconsistent crap have ever seen, let alone all the other
made in China crap.

Unlikely - Diamond's planes are made of plastic!

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Morgans wrote:
I hope the consensus standards board, or if the Symphony (or any other
made in China airplanes) are to be certified, I hope they tear it apart stem
to stern, and check every part for hardness, fatigue, and any other test
they can think of. I can only imagine airplanes falling from the sky, just
like the public thinks is going to happen. One thing for certain; I will
not be flying in a made in China airplane.

I wonder how many others feel the same way.

I don't feel this way at all. I have PIC time in Chinese made aircraft,
and I've helped do the grunt work to annual one. The CJ6 I flew was (and
is, I know the owner, and he's still flying it very frequently despite
the big paycut he had to take going from software engineering to flying
for the airlines!) a very well built plane. It is aerobatted with great
frequency. It certainly seemed better made than the Russian equivalents
(we tend to have the Russky ones here, Russia being closer than China).
Not that the Russian ones are badly made, but quite a bit of Russian
stuff seems to have rather poor finish. The CJ6 had been made with the
attention to the fit and finish of all the parts of the airframe (and
was even corrosion-proofed, which is something Cessna didn't do until
they restarted production in the 1990s).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"