Pilot, Know Thyself: Discovering What It Means to Be Painfully Average

This airline pilot has always nursed the secret conceit of being especially capable aviator—at least until recently.

Sam Weigel

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

So, it turns out, the author discovered he’s nobody special. But the airline pilots he flies with are pretty damn good. [Image: David Weaver/Adobe Firefly]

Key Takeaways:

Pilots, including the author, often harbor a subjective belief of being above-average aviators, which can be challenged by objective performance data.
The FlightPulse app, developed by GE Aerospace, provides individual pilots access to their detailed flight data, originating from the non-punitive Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) program.
This tool enables pilots to conduct objective self-analysis, review specific flagged flight events, and research common operational threats on particular routes to inform pre-flight briefings and enhance safety.
FlightPulse helps pilots gain a data-driven understanding of their performance, revealing that many are "merely average" within a highly competent peer group, promoting continuous improvement.

See a mistake? Contact us.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in my 31 years in aviation, it’s that just about every pilot claims their spiritual hometown as Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Which is to say that if we weren’t all a bunch of raving egomaniacs before we started flying, the experience of soaring through the sky and looking down upon oblivious earthbound folks didn’t do us any favors.

I have yet to meet anyone who describes themselves as a below-average pilot, and the least competent people I’ve flown with were all supremely confident in their abilities. And yet, I too have always nursed the secret conceit that I’m an especially capable aviator—at least until recently, when I received incontrovertible proof that I am, in fact, thoroughly and merely average. I’ve been forced to look in the mirror, and it turns out I’m just a plain Jane after all.