Originally Posted by
beardy
In many more years of training than I care to count I have met a few, very few, natural, gifted and talented individuals. They were outstanding in their ability to manipulate an aircraft and make it do exactly what they wanted it to do. The rest had to work hard to understand why they weren't so gifted, once that hurdle was overcome teaching them became much easier.
I recall an article many years ago, 1990s I guess, where an Army psychologist addressed this same issue while focussing on aircraft accidents. Just as an illustration, she noted that pilots were divided something like 5% natural and 95% nurtured (to use the OP phrase). The bulk of accidents occurred among the latter group 99-1%. The 1% occurred when other factors affected the performance of the nature group, head cold for instance.
Now I made up the figures but they were not far off the truth. They seem to be borne out by the remarks above. I can think of only 4 pilots that I flew with in the nature group and only crewed up with one of them. I can think of many in the latter group.
*I could name names but only in a PM
