SSA Membership Growing

Actual USA numbers ( GAMA from FAA ) show 2004 had 20,950 pilots with only a
glider rating. There are 481,507 total active pilots which include many with
multiple ratings.

"Nyal Williams" wrote in message
...
I don't want to belittle the problems we have, but
the figures ratings/membership must be interpreted
properly.

Three years ago our club was needing more instructors.
A search of the FAA database for instructors in Indiana
indicated there were 56 with CFIG ratings. I examined
the list carefully and learned that most of those living
in my area were old geezers like me and who had been
'ratings collectors' in their prime. I know some of
these guys personally, and I know they haven't been
in a glider since the 1940s and 1950s, that they did
a quickie route to append the rating onto their CFI,
ATP, etc. and that they know almost nothing about soaring.
They flew 2-22s, focussing on the number of flights
and hours required, and never got back in a glider
again.

Remember that there was no glider instructer certificate
until the mid 60s and a commercial glider pilot allowed
to instruct. Further, any commercial glider pilot
who had given as many as 10 instructional flights was
grandfathered. That's the way I got mine.

I see some of these fellows at least monthly, they
know I fly gliders, and they have never mentioned having
the rating. They have all sorts of ratings and I won't
comment further, except to say that they love aviation
and have done lots of SEL/MEL flying.


At 21:06 13 December 2005, wrote:
Of those 1430 glider ratings, how many are actually
getting used?

I read somewhere there are something like 60,000 glider
ratings in the
US, but I'd bet 75% of them are dormant.

Maybe the SSA is basing its membership count on the number of magazines
it mails out..

This is very carefully tracked by the office and is not a magazine
count guess. There is steady, but real progress being made here through
a lot of hard work.
UH

Using the publicly available database of airman certificates from the
FAA for Jan 2006, and recognizing that some pilots have invoked privacy
and are not in the public list, I find

19014 glider pilots with private glider ratings (though 1420 ratings
based on foreign ratings, a few are duplicated, holding commercial and
CFIG)
12772 glider pilots with a commercial rating
3041 glider pilots with a CFIG rating, however there are 6029 listed
with both commercial AND CFIG, so there are between 9731 and 9767 with
commercial as the highest rating. There are a pilots listed with
foreign private and US commercial to further complicate the queries and
my time is a bit limited to fiddle with this.

Assuming the GAMA numbers are accurate WRT the private only ratings,
about 10% appear to have invoked the privacy option. Assuming that
holds across ratings, I get approximately

19014+9749+3041=31804*1.1=34984 which appears higher than estimates of
five years ago. The number is probably somewhat lower, but in the ball
park.

Frank Whiteley

Hank,

How much did the termination of the club rebates impact renewals for
2006?

Andy

Andy wrote:
Hank,

How much did the termination of the club rebates impact renewals for
2006?

I suspect that's a little early to tell. It's certainly making my club
examine other insurance options so that members would not have to belong
to the SSA. The SSA made a mistake here, IMHO.

Tony V.
http://home.comcast.net/~verhulst/SOARING

Probably too early to tell.
From what I know about our club, it is not an issue.
Biggest issue with clubs and chapters has been cleaning up the renewal
process.
UH

Keeping with the new SSA policy on transparency, that would be cleaning
it up at both the clubs' and Hobbs' end of the process.

Since the rebate termination decision was taken, it's become clear that
the full impact wasn't known. Since then, one club has stated that it
required SSA membership of some 60 inactive club members to retain that
inactive status. I heard about another club that might have 20-30
members in that status and I believe there may be another here in
Colorado that does the same. My club doesn't require this at present,
though it might be a good idea to do so. Indeed, I would like the SSA
Clubs & Chapters Committee to recommend this as an SSA chapter 'best
practice'.

No one knows what the impact may be should chapters decide to drop the
SSA requirement of inactive members, but it could range into the
hundreds, which would undo the efforts of the past three years pretty
quickly.

Frank Whiteley

Frank Whiteley wrote:

No one knows what the impact may be should chapters decide to drop the
SSA requirement of inactive members, but it could range into the
hundreds, which would undo the efforts of the past three years pretty
quickly.

My take on the efforts is to increase the number of active SSA members,
so losing inactive memberships wouldn't undo this. It would make the
membership total look worse, but if it can be traced to losing members
that aren't contributing and don't really want to be members, I suggest
it's acceptable.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

I guess it all depends on what you mean by 'inactive'
or 'contributing'. Seems to me that many members carried
as 'inactive' on clubs rosters may not fly, but may
be very active socially. Is paying SSA membership
dues the only kind of 'contribution' that can be counted?
While facing the reality of the membership size is
no bad thing, anything that even marginally deters
fringe supporters is undesirable.

Ian





No one knows what the impact may be should chapters
decide to drop the
SSA requirement of inactive members, but it could
range into the
hundreds, which would undo the efforts of the past
three years pretty
quickly.

My take on the efforts is to increase the number of
active SSA members,
so losing inactive memberships wouldn't undo this.
It would make the
membership total look worse, but if it can be traced
to losing members
that aren't contributing and don't really want to be
members, I suggest
it's acceptable.