> 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...