Would you consider aviation niche?
Posted by C-Section101@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 6 comments
I love aviation. I am 15 right now and am about to start ground school. But I'm having a hard time making friends that are also into aviation, I'm not sure if it's just a small community which it doesn't really seem like it but I've only ever met one person my age in person who enjoys aviation. I mean it's too interesting to be a small community! What are your thoughts about the size of the community?
Guadalajara3@reddit
The individual communities are pretty niche bit overall large community of various types of people
frdwhite24@reddit
Hey u/C-Section101, I'm also a younger PPL student, based in the UK. I found a similar need to connect with similarly interested people so decided to make an app that's essentially Strava but for private pilots. It's called AviNet (https://www.avinet.app/), and now has over 650 pilots worldwide on it, with over 91,000 NM flown and 1800 flight photos shared. We even have one of the youngest PPL holders in the UK on there! I launched it at the start of this year and it's free to use. Maybe check it out and see if you find anyone in your area on it 😊 you can also use it to share your flights with friends and family which I love doing afterwards (e.g. here's one of mine: https://share.avinet.app/?flightId=41c07c4f-4497-459f-8f54-a748c86f2963&token=share-pink-settle)
FlyingCloud777@reddit
The cool thing about aviation is people involved in it professionally actually often want to talk about it and engage in it even when off work—you don't probably find many dentists sitting around after work talking about root canals, but you sure will find pilots talking about planes. And many beyond pilots are interested and involved. At your age I'd look into (if in the USA) AFJROTC, Civil Air Patrol, and other opportunities to be exposed to and educated about aviation.
Qwert808808@reddit
Keep exploring other venues nearby. You may find clubs and organizations that are aviation focused that you may not have known about.
Iridul@reddit
It's a reasonably big community, but you need $$$ to play a part in it and older people tend to have more $$$ than younger people so it doesn't surprise me that you're not finding lots of people your age. There will be some, though, so keep looking.
C-Section101@reddit (OP)
Yeah that makes sense but still I would think more people would find it fascinating