A professional and successful business person, who reaches the point in life where they can afford to fly, cannot be assumed to have the flying experience to back it up. I present JFK Junior as an example of this....
Surely a professional and successful business person, who reaches the point in life where they can afford to fly, should be assumed to have no flying experience whatsoever.
My point is simply that success in many walks of life - law, medicine, business - demands a degree of intelligence and application and this may be useful to them in their flying. Of course, there are exceptions such as people who have inherited wealth.
Anyway, the initial question was 'what are the characteristics of a pilot?' - not 'what are the characteristics of a good pilot?'