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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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What a bizarre thing to say. Well, phew, I guess. Lucky the aircraft wasn't damaged by the single female pilot who already had her licence and was just building up hours. Me and all other males in the world would have expected her woman-brain to take over and cause her to panic-land while doing a backflip and simultaneously rolling her ankle or some shit apparently.
I'm seriously struggling to understand why "without damaging the aircraft" was added to the sentence.
Simple, people assume "student pilot" means doom without realizing how far along people fly with instructors.
I think it's much to assume the surprise is about gender instead of the word "student".
I suppose. However this line then doesn't sit right:
Strictly speaking she was in the role of a student, but it's not like she didn't know what she was doing. If she already had a private pilot licence, what else is there to assume?
She was flying with a flight instructor in the role of student. I think that's enough for a lay person to take those words at face value, not knowing what a PPL means. Even if they searched it up, they'd see 40 hours of flight time, and that's similar to the requirement to give a teenager a driver's license, and it may be hard to square that with landing a plane, which is a very intimating task to people who have mostly never flown an aircraft.
I've seen similar stories about incapacitated flight instructors and celebration of student pilots making it out safely, and I think the reporting is similarly "surprised" about a mere "student" getting out unscathed whether male or female.
To reinforce the point: This is a very stressful situation to place an experienced pilot in where essentially your copilot commits suicide during the flight. I'm sure there are a lot of experienced pilots who might make a mistake in the shock of that scenario.