Hacker News Reader

The probable explanation of 'trying to log more hours' totally makes sense.

This lead me to think, I wonder how much fuel is burnt / Co2 is emitted for these essentially useless purposes around the world.

Well it's a requirement for safety I think, so not entirely useless.

It's more that flying planes for fun might be considered wasteful.

It is, it's part of training and licensing. You wouldn't want someone with no experience flying others or graduating to larger aircraft.

However I do see a large role for VR in the future filling much of this gap, along with automated systems making their way down to smaller aircraft.

IIRC it is possible to use hours logged in MS Flight SIM as a sub for flight hours in training.