The chances of doing it aren't that bad, since a fixed-wing, if trimmed properly, is very stable. A few years back, a crop-duster came in to refuel & reload chemicals, and got out to take a break. He left the engine running, with the wheels chocked, & his ground man was doing the reloads. He leaned into the cockpit, & slipped & hit the throttle, pushing it forward. The plane jumped the chocks, the man fell off, & the plane took off. It flew around until it ran out of gas, & would have landed safely if it hadn't hit the barbed-wire fence as it was touching down. A helicopter that takes off by itself won't fly very far, and a student on his first lesson won't keep it right-side up.
Why do you think the feds require all those medical exams? If the pilot has a heart attack & kills himself, it's not that big a deal, he might have died from the heart attack anyway, but Big Brother frowns on a pilot killing other people, innocent or not.
