Quote:
Originally Posted by O.city
We have a family member that is one of the private Pilots for the Walmart execs. He flies them all over the world
He talks about how underprepared people always are for what they get into flying wise
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Exactly.
It takes maybe a dozen flight hours to be able to fly in ideal conditions. Even landings aren't that tough (and take-offs are a day 2 thing).
But so many private pilots just aren't prepared for adversity. And really, the difference between redundancies on commercial craft vs. private are so enormous.
Flight's simple - lift + velocity. Wings and a motor = flying. Flight surfaces are laughably rudimentary; just redirecting air to steer. So stuff like ultralights are as simple (in many ways more simple) than an economy car.
Commercial craft have the long-term viability chuck hundreds of thousands of dollars in redundancy into and they easily pay for themselves. But to make a commercially viable private aircraft that has those kinds of backup systems is prohibitively expensive for most.
And frankly on a helicopter it's just borderline impossible. Think of how many of those tend to go down in war due to mechanical difficulties. They're just so damn complicated that any kind of system failure is borderline catastrophic.
Like I said - I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often more than anything. It's an inherently dangerous activity.