The Oil Drum: Europe

Just hot air here, so takes it for what it's worth...but I do think GA is pretty much doomed. The costs involved with owning, maintaining, and operating an aircraft are large enough that people form groups to share the costs. Sometimes large groups, yet there are still plenty that are wealthy enough to privately own an aircraft. I don't know about Sweden, but in the US costs can include tie downs/hangers ($60 - $150/month), mandatory 100 hour or annual inspections ($2,000+), insurance ($4,000+/year depends on value of plane) - and those are just fixed costs before you even turn the key, for something that sits around most of the time. At current prices, maintenance costs per hour can run $40-80 per (Hobbs) hour, and fuel is consumed at 6 to 10 gallons per hour (AvGas is about $5/gallon right now).

Most of the people I know that fly - "stretch" their income quite a bit to accommodate it, and an extremely small fraction do anything but "fly the patch" - that is, they don't use them for business travel, but for enjoyment. Thus, most GA flying is discretionary - not even remotely necessary (though sky crack is extremely addictive and makes you believe it's necessary). When people start getting squeezed by the economic Armageddon that PO represents, somethings gonna give and when the spouses start laying down ultimatums "it's either the plane or me" - they'll probably (reluctantly) choose the spouse. I could see, possibly if economic Armageddon goes easy enough, a rise in popularity of ultralight things (which in the US don't require annual/100 hour inspections or insurance and are generally more fuel frugal) gaining some popularity like powered parachutes, trikes, fix wing ultralights, para-gliders, hang-gliders - that kind of thing, but GA as it is now...I don't see any way it's not going to be toast.