http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot.html

Once, nearly every boy had the idea that he would slip the surly
bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings, as John Gillespie
Magee Jr., a pilot in the Canadian Air Force, wrote in 1941. Plenty of people
still go to school hoping for a job at the airlines flying the big jets, but
experts fear that the hobbyist, who flies as an alternative to golf or boating,
or perhaps to take the family 100 miles to a beach or maybe just an obscure
restaurant, is disappearing.



The number of student pilots is down by about a third since 1990, from 129,000
to 88,000. The number of private pilots is down from 299,000 to 236,000,
according to statistics kept by the Federal Aviation Administration. And they
are aging.