Looking up

The Earth we walk on seems to want to pull our heads down, and maybe our spirits. But for some of us, gravity does not have the last word. Like few others, we aviators can look up in more ways than one.

Let’s start where every flight begins: at the end of a runway, preflight complete, clearance received, weather agreeable. We push up the power, and every sense comes alive. We begin rolling, we steer to stay on centerline, engine noise swells, acceleration presses us into our seat, eyes flit from inside instruments to outside objects blurring past us, and then, with back-pressure on the controls, the nose comes up and the wings we love lift us into a freedom like nothing else.

We are doing what 99.9 percent of all the humanity that ever lived has never done. We are flying an airplane.

Imagine how many generations, through how many centuries, in how many places have looked to the sky and stars and wished to fly? We aviators are in one of a precious few generations, in a little over a single century, to be able to experience flight. And most of us live in a country where the opportunity to do what we dream has no equal.

Some 117 billion humans have walked the face of the Earth. Since 1903, four to five million people worldwide have held a pilot certificate. This means 0.0038 percent of us—less than one-half of one percent of one percent—have operated an airplane.

Thanks to general aviation, although the United States occupies only about 6 percent of the world’s total land area, we have almost one-half of the world’s airports and almost one-half of the world’s civil aircraft. And of the total fleet of civil and military aircraft in the United States, more than half of them are single-engine pistons operated by general aviation pilots like you and me. In terms of both pilots and passengers, the United States today is truly an “aviation nation.” Since 1903, an estimated 70 to 85 percent of Americans since 1903 have flown as passengers in an airplane, and that percentage is even higher today. The FAA reports the number of total pilot certificate holders has increased over the past 10 years to almost 850,000 in 2024.

However, the total FAA pilot certificate holder number includes almost 350,000 student pilots. Because student certificates do not expire, many are inactive, and because pilot training is (and should always be) challenging, fewer than 50 percent of student pilots successfully achieve their private pilot license to fly. Some estimates put the completion rate as low as 20 percent. Only about 60 to 70 percent of certificated pilots fly actively; an estimated 30 to 40 percent fly rarely or not at all.

Even with our huge advantage to consider the United States an aviation nation, the certificated pilots here—some 500,000 strong, active and inactive—are still only a tiny minority of one-seventh of one percent of our current population of 350 million plus. Statistically, this means if you had to find another pilot among strangers in a public setting in this country, you would have to ask some 700 people before you would find one.

If such comparisons seem surprising to you, it’s because we aviators tend to associate with each other, and it is easy to feel like there are more of us than there really are. Being in that fortunate fraction of one percent makes us one of the smallest experiential clubs anywhere. We can and should celebrate the good fortune of our uniqueness with the special camaraderie that comes in our small community. It is likely two pilots will manage to find each other in almost any social gathering of strangers and soon reveal themselves with broad smiles, animated hand gestures, and resounding guffaws.

Of course, it is much easier for pilots to find one other around an airport or any number of aviation association events that educate and inspire safe flying and all its accompanying benefits. Camaraderie is the glue that holds us together and the secret ingredient behind the magic of events like the EAA AirVenture every summer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Perhaps more than anywhere else, we realize how fortunate we are when we are together. We don’t take our good fortune for granted. Let’s learn from each other, share with each other, grow through service to others, and apply our perspective to life in general. Pilots flying Cubs to Citations, homebuilts to airliners, gliders to space shuttles. All together.

Greg Anderson is a retired air and space museum CEO, EAA executive, and U.S. Air Force pilot with more than 50 years of flying. He currently flies a Lockwood AirCam.