> It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience.
I dunno where I'd put it on the difficulty scale of things, but with lots of flight sim experience, it seems you're a lot better equipped than others. I've landed a Cessna, and I'm not a pilot, just eager enthusiast with some flight sim experience over many years. The person co-piloting/supervising told me I did great, and that he only allowed me to land the plane because I demonstrated proficiency in the air. I wouldn't say it's "hard", probably I'd have more trouble with finding and replacing the battery than the actual flying part.
I, too, landed whatever tailwheel my grandpa had back when I was eight years old, without even an hour of training. Now, my kids can land my plane too. It helps that I'm on the controls, but they don't seem to notice. I hope my grandpa enjoyed it then as much as I do now.
The suggestion that proficiency "in the air" correlates to ability to land, and the referring to the PIC as "co-piloting" are both pretty good indicators that there's more to the story. Flying is fun, but doing so without training is terribly unforgiving.
> both pretty good indicators that there's more to the story
Happy to share if you have some specific questions rather than insinuations :)
I'm not saying it wasn't reckless, but I also don't think the "It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience" part is fully accurate, but that's just anecdotal and based on personal experience.
While we’re trading anecdotes, I’m a CFI and have never encountered or even heard of a student being able to land an airplane decently (which I’m using in a relaxed sense, not strictly checkride-ready) based solely on sim experience.
Maybe your claim is more along lines of landing an airplane is easy in general. I’ve been flying for 10+ years and still have the occasional one that makes me think That landing really sucked. Let’s grant that you started making decent landings on your first flight lesson or two, and if so, you are in a tiny minority. The Gleim private pilot syllabus has first solo at Flight Lesson 11, which will be at 15 flight hours or more into training. Even then, I’m only soloing students on calm days with plenty of ceiling and visibility.
We had a DPE here in north Alabama who liked to talk candidates who were still wearing foggles all the way to the runway on their final landing of the practical test. He probably could have coached a brand new compliant student to a successful landing, but he had 40k+ hours in his logbook and gave more than ten thousand checkride approvals (not just attempts).
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/june/14/so...
Consider that you did so with an actual pilot beside you in what I presume were CAVOK conditions.
Plenty of children (once they get big enough to reach the pedals) can take a car for a spin. That doesn't mean that driving safely in all conditions you may find yourself thrown in is easy, even with e.g. lots of racing game experience.
> That doesn't mean that driving safely in all conditions you may find yourself thrown in is easy
Absolutely, I agree. But I also didn't claim I'm now a professional airline pilot able to handle all situations, only that the "It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience" part isn't accurate based on my own experience.