One of things that makes me wonder is how often small plane crashes have doctors, lawyers, and other non-professional people as the pilot. There seems to be quite a few small plane crashes, and many of them were piloted by non-professional pilots. I can’t help thinking that many of these non-professional pilots thought that because they were so successful as a doctor, lawyer, or whatever professional, that automatically extended to flying a plane. Obviously, there’s no reason why a professional can’t be a good pilot. But I see so many reports of non-professional pilots with crashed planes, I can’t help but conjecture.
I learned to fly a Piper Cherokee before I went to Army flight school. The instructors regarded me the dumbest student pilot they had ever seen. As a result, I flew like I knew I really was the stupidest pilot - my survival depended upon following every last one of the rules & maintaining all the safety crosschecks and knowing all my emergency procedures, because I wasn’t clever or bold enough to attempt any risky maneuvers in the aircraft.
Hmmm.....and now I’m still here.
When doctors, lawyers, and other professional people pilot their own plane they often start thinking about the reason for the flight, someone needs an operation, a difficult court case, etc. instead of flying the plane. That is what gets them in trouble.
JFK Jr. comes to mind. When he flunked the bar exam umpteen times, it could have indicated that he might not be a very good lawyer or maybe even not a good pilot either.
But he was JFK Jr.
It’s the same with actors, they achieve some measure of success pretending on screen to be what they are not, so that qualifies them as political experts.