If there’s anything that the FAA’s latest aviation industry forecast proves, it’s that you can make the numbers paint just about any picture you want them to, especially when you’re guessing using assumptions about what might happen 20 years from now.
For instance, what if I told you that the number of student pilots in the U.S. at the end of 2010 increased by 64.8 percent, skyrocketing from around 72,000 in 2009 to more than 119,000 one year later. Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last decade, you’d immediately realize there’s a problem with the data. In this case, the huge spike occurred simply because the FAA two years ago decided to increase the validity of student pilot certificates from 36 months to 60 months.
