> 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.

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.

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...

> For instance, there's a few narrow corridors through LAX's airspace that don't require talking to ATC. One of those corridors even goes directly over LAX's runways at a few thousand feet.)

Why do these exist?

Same reason crosswalks for pedestrians exist on roads.

Because they are safe to use, and there is no real reason for them not to exist.

It’s there as a relief valve. LAX has some of the busiest airspace in the world. ATC grants services to VFR traffic on a workload permitting basis. When ATC is too busy separating IFR traffic, which is their higher priority, it allows pilots an option that confines them to a certain area and altitudes.

For details, take a look at the Los Angeles Special Flight Rules Area[0] on the Los Angeles TAC. It gives a narrow set of exceptions. Note the specific assigned altitudes that depend on direction of travel. Also notice that the other VFR transition routes do require ATC clearance.

[0]: https://skyvector.com/?ll=33.630638921294874,-119.6291085071...

Fascinating. Are there instruments that show you in realtime 3d airspaces you can enter and not?

Most aircraft have a GPS on the panel that can show you the airspace around you and along your flight path, but it's not a required instrument. It's more of a 2D depiction of the airspaces, but there are three dimensional depictions on them. There's also apps like ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot that you can run on a tablet or phone.

Before those electronic methods became ubiquitous pilots used paper charts and references and used ground references, pilotage and navigation aids to determine their position on that paper map. For instance, here's the complex airspace around the aircraft owner's home airport. https://skyvector.com/?ll=33.897663018511054,-117.6024627647...

It didn’t roll off the factory floor in 1958 with a moving map GPS. A common retrofit is a Garmin 430 that has a 2D bird’s eye view of airspace lateral boundaries. ForeFlight runs on iPhones and iPads; other electronic flight bag software runs on either iOS or Android devices. But you have to know what you’re looking at and what the rules are for different classes of airspace. In Class C or D, you only have to establish two-way contact, but Class B requires explicit clearance.