I also second the suggestion made by BackPacker: gliding. How many times did that experience save lives when forced to do a deadstick landing?
Zero times?
"Captain! We seem to have run out of fuel! (and I told you those were litres, not gallons)"
"Never mind young lad, I've got lots of gliding experience under my belt. Ah, there is a nice cumulus over there... see if we can get under it."
...or...
"Aren't we lucky? Those are the Himalayas, that's going to be some cracking orographic lift--think we can beat Steve Foster's altitude record, FO?"
Yes, I can see how essential a life-saving skill gliding experience is to an airline pilot
Nothing against gliding, btw (I've done a couple of hours myself and enjoyed it) but that was a bit of a preposterous comment you made there. Pilots have attributed their coming out alive of a sticky situation to all sorts of things, some more reasonable than others: from military experience, to gliding, to luck (
), to riding motorcycles (the DHL shot down in Iraq, IIRC). To my knowledge however, no objective studies have ever been mind to back up any of those assertions.