History Main / ImprobablePilotingSkills

[[quoteright:320:[[Creator/DonRosa https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Flying_skills_7093.png]]]]

Heroes, as a rule, are supposed to be better than everyone else. However, if everyone is using similar (flying) machines to fight, it can be hard to make him stand out above his peers: enter Improbable Piloting Skills. If there’s ANY chance something can be done with a CoolPlane[=/=]HumongousMecha[=/=]HoverTank[=/=]GiantFlyer of choice (and indeed quite possibly even if there isn't), he can do it on the spur of the moment with a 100% success rate. And, of course, anything he climbs into basically gains an instant + 100 to all its stats.

It doesn't matter what sort of machine it is - so long as it can fly, he can pilot it like a pro. Be it a glider, ultra light, single engine Cessna, Mach 50 transforming super fighter, or alien spacecraft, [[InstantExpert just give him five minutes and he'll figure it out]]. This also applies to when the pilot receives their mid-series upgrade. There's never any mention of the months of retraining needed to fly it... At best he's maybe a little clumsy for one episode, or if not, just as likely to blast off in it to save the day against impossible odds [[UniversalDriversLicense five minutes after he first sees the thing]].

This pilot has extremely high intelligence, has excellent 3D perception skills and can [[GoodWithNumbers estimate distances, altitudes, times and velocities in a split second]]. He can perform mental calculations in a snap of fingers and estimate what kind of manoeuvres are needed to perform a certain feat. He is usually excellent on aerodynamics and what is possible and what not, and eager to take calculated risks which seem impossible for the laymen.

The hero's plane is not bothered by concepts such as drag, stall, or lack of thrust. He can throw his craft about the sky in an often [[ArtisticLicensePhysics physics-defying manner]] with no repercussions. This also applies to ships that are an aerodynamic nightmare which would, in reality, have trouble getting off the ground, never mind back flipping at mach 2.

Planes and most flying things tend to be fragile: if an [[RedShirt unnamed character’s craft]] or a [[DisposablePilot or a minor character's cargo plane]] is so much as nicked by a slingshot's pebble, it will explode in a fiery conflagration. Not so the hero's craft, of course. Once he climbs aboard, any Personal PlotArmor he happens to be wearing is transferred to it and indeed quite possibly boosted. His craft may be [[ArtisticLicenseEngineering missing a wing, so full of holes it looks like a sieve, and with one engine out]], and he’ll still manage to shoot down five enemies with it before making an emergency landing. (Note that the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-17-battle-casualty1.gif B-17]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II the Warthog]] are TruthInTelevision.)

The hero doesn’t just have good vision - he has wide angle telephoto vision with a super slow-mo shutter! He’ll always spot the enemy first and never lose track of him once sighted. He can clearly see and [[HighSpeedMissileDodge shoot down/dodge incoming missiles]] that would be nothing but a blur to a real human being as they are often moving faster than bullets.

* Often enough used in all kinds of Franchise/{{Gundam}} (except the unlimitied ammo thing, which occasionally occurs). Interestingly enough the actual planes tend to be less impressive than or equal to ''contemporary RealLife'' designs apart from the occasional EnergyWeapon unless piloted by a main character, to hammer home just how much of an advancement Mobile Suits are. The spaceship-like Mobile Armors are all over the performance scale with some being flying (as if someone just threw them) bricks and others matching the vaunted Gundams themselves in terms of mobility.

** Taken to extremes in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'', though not by the numerous [[AcePilot ace pilots]] as one might expect. Rather, the most improbable is Arnold Neumann, the helmsman of the [[CoolShip Archangel]], who isn't well known enough to be mentioned even once on the trope page of that series, and yet is responsible for some of the most insane maneuvers ever performed by a battleship in a RealRobot series. [[MemeticMutation Doing a barrel roll]] to point the ship's guns down or circumvent an enemy battleship? No problem. Recovering from a botched atmospheric re-entry? Not even worth a mention. Dodging beams and guided missiles alike between the time they are fired and the time they reach his ship (many times maneuvering so quickly it looks like the crew would surely be turned to red paste against the walls)? All in a day's work. And the Archangel isn't a small ship. It's TheBattlestar, and several times larger than the biggest modern aircraft carrier. It ought to break its wings, if not break in half, for doing such things. In Destiny he manages to avoid a point blank shot from Minerva's cannon by banking the Archangel completely to one side, dodging the shot and flying completely past Minerva (who's own helmsman just looks completely stunned) to get behind her. While they were between two mountains with barely any room to move. And he does it before even getting the evasion order as the Captain was too surprised, he just does it by instinct.

** [[Anime/MacrossFrontier Alto Saotome]], who, after a few weeks' training, was able to match and surpass seasoned [=SMS=] and [[FunWithAcronyms NUNS]] veterans (and became almost equal to a cyborg flying a SuperPrototype of his own). However, it was noted that he already had some pilot training before joining SMS.

* Naturally, ''Film/FirstMan'' shows off the incredible and dangerous maneuveurs pulled off by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

** Some of the maneuvers with the real world hovercrafts fall into this trope as well.

* ''Film/{{Stealth}}'' was mostly based around the notion of introducing [[AIIsACrapshoot AI pilots]] who would be unaffected by the physical limitations of human pilots. At one point, the [=AI=] plane is ordered to pull off a maneuver which would be incredibly difficult for a human pilot to do and survive, in order to destroy a bunker full of terrorists. One of the human pilots disobeys orders and makes the run himself (apparently just to satisfy his ego) and suffers no lasting injury (or punishment). The human pilots manage to keep up with the robot plane for most of the film, except when the plot requires them to fail.

** There's one avian-style species noted to have a much better comprehension of 3D maneuvering than most other species', but being avian-esque, they have weaker bones and so they can't pull as many G's. And since all travel is acceleration based (thank you, ''Einstein''), fleets with ships outfitted for them can't accelerate nearly as hard.

* Creator/JohnRingo's ''Literature/TroyRising'': In ''Citadel'' and ''The Hot Gate'', [[AcePilot Dana "Comet" Parker]] stands out for her flying skills. After a fair amount of training, on her first mission she accelerated into the landing zone (she was being chased by missiles), executed a skew turn (on her first try) to decelerate, and barely survived smashing into the far wall before dropping into the landing zone as her craft lost all power. The people watching this were debating whether to give her a medal for such skill or a [[CourtMartialed Mast]] for being utterly insane. Later she accelerates into another landing zone and the decelerates at 400 gravities (Ringo goes on and on about how Earth based equipment cannot accomplish 400 gravities even with head-on collisions) with such skill that she comes to an almost dead stop exactly on the landing zone "with a slight bump". The people watching were openly screaming in terror as they saw her heading towards them at incredible speeds, convinced that she was going to crash and kill them all.

* In ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', if it weren't for Wash's piloting skills the crew of ''Serenity'' would have been captured, dead or worse several times. Mal even calls him a 'genius pilot' at one point, and it's noted several high profile people courted him before he signed on with ''Serenity''. He's done a flat spin in atmosphere, successfully docked the ship with a space station, unpowered, from 6000 miles out, barnstormed down a snowy canyon, and in the movie ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', he flies their tiny ship through a titanic battle without a scratch and manages to crashland it safely, even after losing one engine and getting hit by an EMP weapon.

Oh yes. You can move from a Liberty Light Fighter to a Corsair Heavy Fighter instantly, without any prior knowledge. Add a mod or 2, and you could end up piloting a battleship or a prison ship. Possible justified, as humans have learnt how to harness wormholes, so how hard can it be to create ships that are linked to the owner telepathically?

* An earlier Creator/BioWare example was Carth Onasi of ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic''. Flying a damaged escape pod and managing to crash it in the "good" part of town, flying through at least one Sith blockade, a dramatic escape from the Sith flagship ''Leviathan,'' no less than five Sith patrols, and setting down on Lehon, despite having most of the ''Hawk's'' engines and systems crippled by the planet's defense shield (the place they land is pretty much a starship graveyard with hundreds of ships fallen over he centuries). Atton in the second game also flies the ''Ebon Hawk'' and several shuttles through overwhelming blockades and hostile fire. [[spoiler: Atton is confirmed to be a Force sensitive and drawing on it subconsciously to help him fly. There are several hints in-game saying this ''could'' apply to Carth as well.]]

* In ''Videogame/MechWarrior Living Legends'', aerospace fighters behave somewhat like a real plane - provided you ''fly it like one''. Ace pilots rely on exploiting the wonky aircraft physics, such as flying a Sparrowhawk scout plane at 30 kph upside-down mere meters from the ground, or by cutting the throttle while hammering the pitch/roll/yaw controls, causing the plane to turn on a dime in mid air. It's possible to land planes on each other or have [[PoweredArmor battlearmor]] ride on the wings (albeit very prone to [[TeleFrag ending in disaster]]). Planes will bounce harmlessly off [[HumongousMecha battlemech]] torsos (but nothing else), allowing pilots to literally ricochet themselves out of danger. Additionally, planes suffer no consequences for flying underwater or in space, the latter courtesy of [[SpacePlane all in-game aircraft being both atmospheric and vacuum flight-capable]]

** 64 subverts the 3x Faster rule too in the Hard version of Venom: Team Star Wolf has ships that have about as much armour as the arwings, and are considerably faster, to the point where it's difficult to use the traditional manveuring tricks to get behind one that's tailing you, and even then, you only have a couple of seconds to get a shot off.

* The If It Flies rule is present in ''VideoGame/TachyonTheFringe'', as [[Creator/BruceCampbell Jake]] cam go from a barely-fliable Mako to a top-of-the-line Archangel without any training. The [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]] even claims he single-handedly saved the shuttle him and his family were taking by piloting it... as a teenager with no prior experience.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'' has Launchpad [=McQuack=], who has the {{Catchphrase}} "If it has wings, I can crash it." He can fly anything -- even live animals, untested technology, and [[Recap/DuckTalesS1E4WhereNoDuckHasGoneBefore alien spaceships with controls not designed for his species]] -- with excellent skill. [[CaptainCrash The only thing he can't do is land]]. He appears to have overcome this problem by ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'', or else maybe the [[CoolPlane Thunderquack]] just has auto pilot landing skills, or a thoroughly reinforced hull.

** The Speedbird 9 incident of 1982. British Airways Flight 9 was cruising near Jakarta when it encountered a strange kind of St. Elmo's Fire which seemed to envelop the plane in white lights. Shortly thereafter, all the engines failed. The 747 was now a 800,000+ lb glider. With only so much time before they hit the ocean, the crew abbreviated the engine restart procedure to give them more chances. Finally, the engines started back up and the plane turned back to Jakarta. Not long after, however, one of the engines started backfiring and had to be shut down. As they approached the airport, the pilot noticed he could barely see out the windscreen, and, proving FinaglesLaw is at work, the guidance equipment on the ground was not working. He had to land using only a tiny sliver of glass on one side that was clear enough to see through.[[note]] Captain Eric Moody would later describe it as being "like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse".[[/note]] The reason? They'd been flying through a volcanic ash cloud. The plane had literally been sand blasted at 500 miles an hour!

* The incident known as "Panic Over the Pacific": On 19 February 1985, China Airlines Flight 006 was approaching California coast when the No.4 engine flamed out. While this wasn't any threat to the flight - the 747 still had three fully operative engines - it triggered a series of misjudgments, omissions and errors on behalf of the pilots, resulting in the aircraft literally falling from the sky: the 747 was diving through thick clouds at a rate of 150 meters/second, resulting in a 5g forces experienced by the people on board and the aircraft performing maneuvers that vastly exceeded its operational limits, which resulted in a vast damage to its horizontal stabilizers, main landing gear doors being ripped off, one of the hydraulic systems destroyed and the wings being permanently bent slightly upwards. The 747 fell from 41000 to 11000 feet in less than two and a half minutes. It came out of the clouds slightly under 11000 feet; half a minute later, at 9600 feet, the captain had his aircraft in fully controlled, leveled and stable flight. The NTSB experts described the recovery of the aircraft as "a masterpiece of flying". The 747 landed safely in San Francisco with no loss of life - 24 of 251 people on board were injured (2 seriously). The errors of the flight crew that triggered the incident were found to be caused by a severe jet lag - a factor whose influence on flight crews was not studied before.

* An Israeli F-15 pilot, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]], refused to bail out after crashing with another plane during a training exercise, claiming he could still return his plane safely to base and land it. When he climbed out of the cockpit on the runway, he said he would not have hesitated to eject for a single second if he had know that he [[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2091/2112723594_21abfbfcfc_o.jpg had lost an entire wing]][[note]]there was so much smoke emitting from his plane, he couldn't see how bad the damage was while he was flying[[/note]]. When American technicians arrived to evaluate the damage, they assumed a truck had crashed into it while on the ground.

* During a test flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II (the VTOL version of the design), a pilot ended up flying the jet backwards at about 400 mph for half a minute before recovering. Due to the stealth design of fifth generation fighter jets being about as aerodynamic as a flat stone, the maneuver is so easy to pull off as to do it on accident. [[AchievementsInIgnorance The pilot had actually done it in a panic due to a computer malfunction]], causing the jet to do a perfect horizontal rotation with the VTOL thrusters. Though the event was extremely dangerous and stressful on the body, an observer suggested it could be used as a last ditch maneuver to confront a pursuing aircraft.

* Many so-called "unorthodox" and "unclean" (because the bank indicator will swing wildly) manoeuvres will befall on the "Aerody-whatsit?" category. Examples are slips, snap rolls (a controlled spin along the horizontal axis where the tail of the plane will draw a "corkscrew" track), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomcovak lomcovaks]] (Czech for "headache" and kulbits. Snap roll is called in Finnish as ''älytön'' ("scatterbrain") as the stick and pedals are actuated in diagonally opposite directions.

* Pan Am 843. Seconds after take off from San Francisco International Airport, the right most engine on the Boeing 707 exploded and started a fire that caused 1/3 of the right wing to fall off moments later. The pilots, despite telling air traffic control they weren't sure they could keep the plane in the air or not, managed to keep the plane with 153 people on board flying for 34 minutes and made a safe emergency landing at Travis Air Force Base.

** The most well-known, of course, is Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549. After losing both engines he pulled off one of the few water landings to not kill anyone.
*** In an aversion of the trope, Sully explicitly and repeatedly refused to be called a "hero", or acknowledge that he did anything extraordinary; he simply did it all by the book. He was definitely lucky, however; even going by the book, several factors had to come together in a narrow combination for them to be able to pull off a water landing in the Hudson river, rather than struggle to the Atlantic Ocean or - far worse - try to set down on the ''streets of New York City''.

** A DHL Airbus A300 cargo plane also managed to safely land in Baghdad in 2003 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident after being struck with a surface-to-air missile]] in 2003, which knocked out all flying surfaces.
*** Unlike most pilots on the list however, these guys were heavily assisted by the plane itself. Prior to this incident, Airbus had decided to [[CrazyPrepared install software on some of its planes]] that would assist the flight crew in the event of a total hydraulics failure. While the plane still required balls made of titanium to fly at that point, the pilots still managed to land the thing safely... [[FromBadToWorse only for the aircraft to slide off the runway and into a field of]] [[OhCrap Unexploded Ordinance.]] Luckily, they had landed at a military base and the firemen knew where all the mines were.

** The captain of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110 TACA Flight 110]] was preparing to ditch his plane in the canals surrounding New Orleans following a loss of power in both engines when the first officer suddenly noticed a grass levee running beside it that was large enough to land on. With only seconds to react, the captain completely changed the plane's trajectory to line up with the levee and then landed so perfectly that every single person was able to walk off the plane. Furthermore, the plane was completely intact and, after a change of engines, was able to fly out of there on it's own. Oh, and in case this wasn't difficult enough, said captain pulled this off while [[HandicappedBadass having only one eye]], having lost his left eye several years earlier.
*** The incident in which the pilot, Carlos Dardano, lost his eye also qualifies. Upon landing on a rural airstrip in El Salvador, Dardano inadvertantly ended up in the crossfire of the country's raging civil war and was shot in the face. Gravely injured and with a hole where his eye had been minutes earlier, Dardano nonetheless got back in the cockpit of his plane and flew himself and his passengers 20 minutes to safety. Afterwards, Dardano went through and passed special certification trials to ensure he could qualify continue with his flying license despite his handicap.

** The Speedbird 9 incident of 1982. British Airways flight 9 was cruising near Jakarta when it encountered a strange kind of St. Elmo's Fire which seemed to envelop the plane in white lights. Shortly thereafter, all the engines failed. The 747 was now a 800,000+ lb glider. With only so much time before they hit the ocean, the crew abbreviated the engine restart procedure to give them more chances. Finally, the engines started back up and the plane turned back to Jakarta. Not long after, however, one of the engines started backfiring and had to be shut down. As they approached the airport, the pilot noticed he could barely see out the windscreen, and, proving FinaglesLaw is at work, the guidance equipment on the ground was not working. He had to land using only a tiny sliver of glass on one side that was clear enough to see through.[[note]] Captain Eric Moody would later describe it as being "like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse".[[/note]] The reason? They'd been flying through a volcanic ash cloud. The plane had literally been sand blasted at 500 miles an hour!

* The incident known as "Panic Over The Pacific": On 19 February 1985, China Airlines Flight 006 was approaching California coast when the No.4 engine flamed out. While this wasn't any threat to the flight - the 747 still had three fully operative engines - it triggered a series of misjudgments, omissions and errors on behalf of the pilots, resulting in the aircraft literally falling from the sky: the 747 was diving through thick clouds at a rate of 150 meters/second, resulting in a 5g forces experienced by the people on board and the aircraft performing maneuvers that vastly exceeded its operational limits, which resulted in a vast damage to its horizontal stabilizers, main landing gear doors being ripped off, one of the hydraulic systems destroyed and the wings being permanently bent slightly upwards. The 747 fell from 41000 to 11000 feet in less than two and a half minutes. It came out of the clouds slightly under 11000 feet; half a minute later, at 9600 feet, the captain had his aircraft in fully controlled, leveled and stable flight. The NTSB experts described the recovery of the aircraft as "a masterpiece of flying". The 747 landed safely in San Francisco with no loss of life - 24 of 251 people on board were injured (2 seriously). The errors of the flight crew that triggered the incident were found to be caused by a severe jet lag - a factor whose influence on flight crews was not studied before.

** A simulation of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_akKKf2o3I this flight]] and many others are avaliable from {{YouTuber|s}} Xplane.
* The real life epitome of "If It Flies..." would have to be [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Brown_%28pilot%29 Captain Eric Brown]], [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships RN]]. He's officially credited with having flown [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_flown_by_Eric_%22Winkle%22_Brown 487 different aircraft types]] in his career as a test pilot (and that's only counting basic models), including everything from Mach 2 jets to gliders and from helicopters to airliners, often hopping between up five separate types in a single day's testing. He even taught himself to fly helicopters with nothing but the instruction manual, [[InstantExpert mere hours after first seeing one]].[[note]]Brown and his companion had assumed that the Americans who were going to deliver the helicopters to them would have a trainer to give them at least a crash course. When this turned out not to be the case, they read the manual, did some practice runs, [[LiquidCourage took a stiff drink]], then got down to business.[[/note]]
* An Israeli F-15 pilot, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]], refused to bail out after crashing with another plane during a training exercise, claiming he could still return his plane safely to base and land it. When he climbed out of the cockpit on the runway, he said he would not have hesitated to eject for a single second if he had know that he [[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2091/2112723594_21abfbfcfc_o.jpg had lost an entire wing]][[note]]there was so much smoke emitting from his plane, he couldn't see how bad the damage was while he was flying[[/note]]. When American technicans arrived to evaluate the damage, they assumed a truck had crashed into it while on the ground.

* Werner Voss, a German ace pilot in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, managed to fight ''seven'' British aircraft by himself for over ten minutes, managing to damage all of them before finally being shot down. His opponents were no amateurs: they were led by the Victoria Cross-winning ace, James [=McCudden=] and included 20-victory ace Arthur Rhys-Davids and two other eventual aces. The British pilots all report him doing insane maneuvers on his triplane, including strafing enemies by practically flying ''sideways.'' Note that he did this by taking often problematic and unstable aerodynamic properties of the design, which often cause pilots to lose control, and instead using them to his advantage.

* The presence of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_vectoring thrust vectoring]] in some of the world's most up-to-date fighter planes has allowed pilots to perform maneuvers that would have been very difficult, if not impossible, in the past.
** Yes, this means that the SU-35 can, among [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaT4XsWrqSE other things]], ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54fKamyyAF4 backflip.]]''

** British pilots flying Harrier jump-jets in UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar used similar tactics to outwit faster and technically superior Argentinian jet fighters, with the result that no British planes were lost in combat, and Argentinian combat losses soon approached operationally critical levels. One Royal Navy pilot became a recognised ace, shooting down five Argentinean fighters from his Harrier. In this case, the Harrier pilots kicked their planes into hover mode, causing the plane to rapidly decelerate and their persuers to overshoot. Any plane can attempt this maneuver (by deploying air brakes, flaps, and landing gear, [[GodzillaThreshold in worst-case scenarios]]), but planes not designed for hovering have the not insignificant issue that slowing down too much will cause them to fall from the sky.
* In February 1941, Luftwaffe bomber wings were sent to Sicily to support the Italian Air Force and regain control of the Med from the British. A priority for the Germans was to sink the Royal Navy aircraft carriers whose aircraft had crippled the Italian fleet in its home port of Taranto. When HMS Illustrious was attacked in Grand Harbour, Malta, by ninety German aircraft, an antiquated Swordfish biplane was in the landing circuit and was practically the only British plane in the sky. As landing on the carrier was not practicable, the Swordfish set about being as big a nuisance as it could to the German attackers, despite being obsolescent and slow and outnumbered ninety to one. Exploiting its advantages of slow speed and greater mobility (the Swordfish flew so slowly that typical fighter aircraft over-shot or stalled trying to keep it in their sights for long enough), the pilot, Lieut-Commander Charles Lamb R.N., repeatedly disrupted bombing runs by Stukas, forcing them to bomb wide, while his air-gunner took whatever retaliatory shots he could. Lamb eventually realised, when the aircraft juddered and the whole port-side wing assembly flapped, that the retaining pin securing his port wings (used to fold them back and save space on board ship) had been shot away and the aircraft was on the point of folding up in mid-air. Incredibly, he was able to crash-land and both men survived, even though his biplane presented a lopsided appearance. Lamb, later in the war, shot down three Italian fighters in a single engagement, who appeared to consider an old obselete biplane easy meat..

* Incidentally, the modern more relaxed requirements for eyesight (i.e. eyeglasses or corrective surgery allowed) have paradoxally opened aviation for Bespectacled Eagle Eye pilots. The reason is that the visus value ("20/20") and refraction value (dioptric value) of an eye are two different values. The visus value measures the ''acuity'' of an eye (i.e. how accurately the eye can distinguish between two lines) while the refractive value measures if the eye is nearsighted (myopic) or farsighted (hyperopic). A person whose eyes have -2.0 dioptric value is hopelessly nearsighted without glasses (perhaps having 20/100 or 20/200 visus bare-eyed) but he may well have 20/10 acuity with good eyeglasses, making him a true eagle eye. Contact lenses are especially suitable for aviators.

** The captain of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110 TACA Flight 110]] was preparing to ditch his plane in the canals surrounding New Orleans following a loss of power in both engines when the first officer suddenly noticed a grass levee running beside it that was large enough to land on. With only seconds to react, the captain completely changed the plane's trajectory to line up with the levee and then landed so perfectly that every single person was able to walk off the plane. Oh, and in case this wasn't difficult enough, said captain pulled this off while [[HandicappedBadass having only one eye]], having lost his left eye several years earlier.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Hardwar}}'', you are the only pilot who has the skills to perform crazy stuff with your Moth in the Titan moon, even if you're flying in the smallest and weakest Moth in the game. [[ArtificialStupidity All of the other AI pilots including the police don't have such skills and are restricted to flying predictable patterns of which you can easily exploit even in their best days]]. In multiplayer, though, expect the other human pilots to utilize the same flying skills as you do so don't get cocky.

* ''VideoGame/EveOnline'' is possibly the poster child for this trope. Although it does take time (lots and lots of time), you can fly any ship, from 747-sized frigates to Titans that are MILES long. And enhance their capabilities just by virtue of being ''that damn good''. Make your weapons more damaging, faster firing, more accurate and longer ranged? Check. Make your ship tougher, faster, more agile and more powerful (in a literal, 'generate more power from the powerplant' way)? Check. And most importantly, do all of the above without actually adding anything to the ship? Big check. Particularly jarring when you consider that this can happen in the middle of a fight if a skill completes at the right time.
** You hit the nail on the head though: While you CAN fly anything in the game, it takes weeks or even months (real time) to actually learn all of the necessary skills...and that's only to be able to pilot it with the efficiency of a drunken whale. Not to mention your ship is always a highly customized piece of equipment, and finishing a skill amounts to learning how to tweak something to get a tiny bit more performance out of it...ya know, kind of like how most people customize things in real life.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'':
** On a larger scale, NonActionGuy Joker in ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' claims to be able to make the CoolStarship ''Normandy'' sit up and dance. He proves he's not exaggerating when, among other accomplishments, he swoops down from orbit and drops a TANK in a narrow street, not 30 feet from the main villain without scratching it at all, while facing hostile fire and then swooping back up into orbit with no problems. He ''is'' the best pilot in TheAlliance, after all.
** He pulls a [[Franchise/StarWars Han Solo]] in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' when he flies through an entirely unmapped debris field close to a black hole (the ship had strong protection), ensuring the Normandy took barely any damage.
** Joker comments that banking in a vacuum is actually really hard, but he's just that good. He was probably exaggerating to promote himself. Regardless, he's one of the best human pilots alive, if not the singular best. Makes you wonder how someone with weak bones can pull that many G's, but when you accept the Mass Effect itself, you can pretty much handwave most of physics quite comfortably.

* Sonic exhibited improbable piloting skills in a few episodes of ''Anime/SonicX''. Episode 63 "Station Break-In" in particular. His antics behind the controls of the X-Tornado are wild and dangerous and include dodging pipes at breakneck speed and using the plane itself as a weapon rather than the plane's ammunition, much to Knuckles' displeasure. However, he has enough aviating skill ''by far'' to pull off these stunts with incredible fortitude and grace.
* ''Anime/DokiDokiPrecure'': This is pretty much the only explanation as to why Alice (aka Cure Rosetta), a 14-year-old, is capable of piloting a space shuttle. A space shuttle that she ''personally'' owns.
* Hakura/Sailor Uranus of ''Anime/SailorMoon'' is a champion-level racer in an improbably wide variety of motor vehicles, including sports cars, Formula 1, road motorcycles, motorcross, and even ''helicopters''. Her EstablishingCharacterMoment has her playing Minako in a racing video game and overcoming a MercyLead so fast her tailwind capsizes the other car. Theoretically, this could have been based on some kind of physics engine exploit, but no explanation is provided--Haruka's vehicle just seemed to be inherently faster because she was controlling it.
* In ''Anime/TheSkyCrawlers: Innocent Aces'', main character Lynx/Cheetah demonstrates the ability to perform post-stall maneuvers such as the Kulbit, which explicitly require thrust vectoring because they are by their very nature maneuvers that cannot be performed with purely aerodynamic forces, in a piston-engine fighter, which cannot possibly have anything like thrust vectoring. Even for an exceptionally skilled pilot, this should be impossible.

* Ronto, a Rogue Squadron pilot in ''ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy'', invokes the "If it flies..." variant when asked if he could fly an Imperial shuttle during a prison break. He responds with, "Lady, if you had wings, I could fly '''you'''."
* [[Comicbook/FantasticFour Ben Grimm]] is occasionally portrayed as having been an almost impossibly good pilot before becoming the Thing, being able to fly anything from normal planes to spaceships to whacked-out sci-fi vehicles. This (along with being Reed Richards' best friend) is why he on the space mission that led to the Fantastic Four's existence. After his transformation he still has the skills, but is hampered by being too big to comfortably get into a normal pilot seat and strong enough that he's in danger of breaking "fragile" steering mechanisms unless he's very careful.

* Subverted in Creator/CrossGen's ''ComicBook/{{Negation}}''. The group of fugitives believed sigil-bearer Westin's ability was to pilot any alien spacecraft he could get his hands on, which was true, but he could actually look into the recent past and see how the ship's previous owner operated the ship. Westin would then copy their movements.

* This is the schtick of Kevin "Ace" Koss in Fred Perry's ''ComicBook/GoldDigger''. Pulling a CurbStompBattle against a squadron of enemy pilots (all of them veteran fighter aces, all of them using technologically superior fighters--and with his weapons ''mostly non-functional'') is [[ButForMeItWasTuesday just a typical adventure with the Diggers sisters]]. His rivals (and one unwanted StalkerWithACrush) Roxanne "Dark Bird" Rabinowitz and Skipper "Skippy" [[TheVonTropeFamily von]] [[ShoutOut Rich]][[RedBaron tofen]] are just as good--and the only people who can make any of them break a sweat in a dogfight is either of the other two.
* Comicbook/{{Batman}}. Most versions of the Bat Wing should instantly spiral out of control and crash if they somehow managed to get airborne due to how small the control surfaces are. The fact that he can get the thing to fly level, much less actually dogfight with it, lands him squarely in this trope.

* ''Film/TopGun'' is entirely based around this trope. Subverted with the flat spins. Watch out for that jetwash, Maverick!
* ''Film/{{Stealth}}'' was mostly based around the notion of introducing [[AIIsACrapshoot AI pilots]] who would be unaffected by the physical limitations of human pilots. At one point, the [=AI=] plane is ordered to pull off a maneuver which would be incredibly difficult for a human pilot to do and survive, in order to destroy a bunker full of terrorists. One of the human pilots disobeys orders and makes the run himself (apparently just to satisfy his ego) and suffers no lasting injury (or punishment). The human pilots manage to keep up with the robot plane for most of the film, except when the plot requires them to fail.
** It's clear from the dogfight scene with the Su-37s that the animators either didn't know or didn't care about G-forces.

* ''Film/HotShots'' as it is mostly a parody of ''Film/TopGun'' parodies most versions of this trope. Topper's plane can cartwheel through the air, paddle enemy planes out of the sky with his wings, and fly through downtown traffic. He also loses both wings, his engines, his instruments and most of his hull but lands successfully on the aircraft using a perpendicular trajectory.

* ''Film/TheATeam'' had Murdoch do some impossible things with a helicopter and then culminated with him 'flying' a tank.
* Most of the subtropes can be [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the Force, and we all know Creator/GeorgeLucas is in hot, drooling love with the OldSchoolDogfight, but all that aside, [[Franchise/StarWars Luke Skywalker]] (and to a lesser extent, Wedge Antilles) has ''massive'' Reinforced Plot Armor. He and his dad seem to have a healthy dose of "If It Flies..." as well.
** Add both Han Solo and Lando Calrissian to this list. With no Force assistance they both make the Millenium Falcon perform some absurdly precise and extreme maneuvers.
** Anakin somehow manages to land the remaining section of a breaking-apart capital ship on a landing strip on Coruscant, not to mention blowing up the Droid Control ship in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' despite having ''never flown before.''
** As for Luke? Well, he has flown a T-16 Skyhopper, which is manufactured by the same company (Incom) that makes the X-Wing, with a similar design. This allows him to climb into the cockpit with little trouble. And he is, after-all, not only Force Sensitive but, [[WordOfGod per Lucas]], the strongest Force-user in all of (''Legends'') canon. Still...
** Poe Dameron in ''Film/TheForceAwakens''. He actually manages to exceed anything even ''Luke'' has done onscreen, despite (supposedly) not being Force-sensitive. He is practically a one-man squadron. At Takodana he takes a massive toll on First Order TIE Fighters (downing half a squadron in a single pass!) as well as managing to snipe Stormtroopers on the ground! At Starkiller Base he accomplishes an AirstrikeImpossible, flying through a trench while under heavy fire (like Luke in ''Film/ANewHope'') and ''into'' the weapon through a burning rupture formed by explosives so that he can shoot out crucial systems from the inside while still making it out alive (like Wedge Antilles in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'')! He also invokes the "if it flies..." trope when Finn frees him from his cell and ask if he can fly a TIE Fighter, saying "I can fly anything."
*** Rey pulls off some impressive maneuvers herself after stealing the ''Millennium Falcon'' on Jakku, despite all her previous experience being on simulators for smaller ships, and some of the controls being physically out of reach from the pilot's seat (the ''minimum'' crew of a YT-1300 is supposed to be a pilot ''and'' co-pilot). She evades TIE Fighters by flying ''through'' the remains of a crashed Star Destroyer, and sets up Finn to kill the last one despite his turret being jammed downward, by flipping the ship and pointing the now very awkwardly placed gun straight at the enemy fighter.

* ''Film/{{Always}}'' has pilots diving headlong into a blazing forest, with the tips of trees brushing their belly, and coming out in one piece. Al describes just what they're up against:
-->'''Al''': In a real fire, there's heat! There's heat that can suck you under, flip you over! There's currents that can tie a knot in a windsock!

* Naturally, ''Film/FirstMan'' shows off the incredible and dangerous maneuveurs pulled off by the Apollo 11 astronauts.
** Neil manages to regain control of the X-15 flight as it threatens to skip off the atmosphere helplessly into space and he even manages to land roughly where he was supposed to.
** Neil recovers the spin on the Gemini flight, with little help from MissionControl, in pitch darkness, and after his co-pilot has passed out from the G-forces. He does it by correctly deciding that the flight control thrusters are causing the problem, turning them off, and then using the ship's re-entry thrusters to regain control. He saves the astronauts' lives, but the mission has to be aborted because he used up three-quarters of the re-entry fuel doing it.
** Neil fails to regain control of the LLRV (in reality the vehicle suddenly lost fuel pressure to its attitude thrusters, so there was ''no way'' to regain control), but he does eject in time to avoid being killed in the crash.
** Lastly, and most memorably, landing the LEM manually to avoid landing on top of a boulder or in a crater, all while the landing computer keeps setting off the master alarm. The movie, in fact, downplays the precariousness of the LEM landing as the error codes displayed by the computer required more serious intervention than just turning the alarm off each time. This was displayed with some accuracy in ''Series/FromTheEarthToTheMoon''.

* Literature/HarryPotter, as soon as he gets out one of the clumsy, old-as-sin school training brooms (without having touched a broom before), can catch an apple-sized (glass) sphere in his hand after a fifty-foot dive, and topple gently to the ground. Granted, it's magic, but ''dayum''.
* The Creator/MichaelCrichton novel ''{{Literature/Airframe}}'' involves a plane that went through a series of wild dives and climbs that nearly tore it apart, leaving everyone wondering how the pilot was able to get it under control and land. [[spoiler: Subverted when it turns out the pilot was actually causing it due to not being familiar with the type of aircraft.]]
* Lethally subverted in ''Literature/DreadEmpiresFall'' - not only are maneuvers like those of this trope terribly hard to ''comprehend'', never mind perform, but in what is essentially an atomic slugfest, your pinnace is the least survivable cans on the firing range. And the closest. And missiles can pull more G's than you. The only wartime purpose they serve is to coordinate the missiles at the relativistic battle distances, and they're only slightly more retrievable than their explosive flock.
** Even with large ships, this trope is averted. Good tactics and firing solutions served the protagonists better than piloting did in any combat. And lighter armor or smaller arsenals only meant you had less firepower to overwhelm the enemy with.
** There's one avian-style species noted to have a much better comprehension of 3D maneuvering than most other species', but being avian-esque, they have weaker bones and so they can't pull as many G's. And since all travel is acceleration based (thank you, ''Einstein''), fleets with ships outfitted for them can't accelerate nearly as hard.
* In the ''Literature/{{Biggles}}'' books, Biggles and his companions never seem to have much difficulty mastering the controls of whatever aircraft they're required to fly in each volume. Probably justified, as Biggles has been a professional aviator since the age of seventeen, starting out as a fighter pilot in wood-and-canvas biplanes and then spending the twenties and thirties in civil aviation before being called up for the Second World War; there can't be many classes of aircraft he ''hasn't'' flown at some point, and his colleagues aren't far behind him in professional experience. There's also a surprising exception: It was a plot point in one of the earlier novels that Biggles was ''not'' [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_Flight_Rules IFR]]-certified. It never comes up again, so presumably he eventually corrected this gap in his skillset.
* In Creator/MelisaMichaels' ''Skyrider'' series, Melacha "Skyrider" Rendell has this reputation. She's widely considered to be the best pilot in the belt. To some extent, the reputation is deserved, as she proves when she has to manually dock with a spinning, out-of-control ship, rescue its crew, and get away safely again.
* Creator/JohnRingo's characters tend to be larger than life, but in [[Literature/TroyRising Citadel]] and [[Literature/TroyRising The Hot Gate]] [[Main/AcePilot Dana "Comet" Parker]] stands out for her flying skills. After a fair amount of training, on her first mission she accelerated into the landing zone (she was being chased by missiles), executed a skew turn (on her first try) to decelerate, and barely survived smashing into the far wall before dropping into the landing zone as her craft lost all power. The people watching this were debating whether to give her a medal for such skill or a [[Main/CourtMartialed Mast]] for being utterly insane. Later she accelerates into another landing zone and the decelerates at 400 gravities (Ringo goes on and on about how Earth based equipment cannot accomplish 400 gravities even with head-on collisions) with such skill that she comes to an almost dead stop exactly on the landing zone "with a slight bump". The people watching were openly screaming in terror as they saw her heading towards them at incredible speeds, convinced that she was going to crash and kill them all.

* Dobbs from the German TV action show ''Series/DerClown''. The movie ''Payday'' takes his badassness to the max as he flies multiple loops with his helicopter only a few hundred feet above ground while successfully [[HighSpeedMissileDodge evading heat-seeking missiles]].

* Colonel Jack O'Neill from ''Series/StargateSG1'' pilots an F-302 on a couple of occasions, despite a conspicuous lack of pilot's wings on his uniform. He has stated in dialogue to have been a test pilot in the past, to give a HandWave for this.
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'':
** Colonel John Sheppard from claims he can fly anything. He proceeds to do so over the course of the series. He's flown or operated helicopters, Air Force fighters, human-alien hybrid F-302 interceptors, Daedalus-class warships, Wraith Darts (without knowing the language), Ancient Puddle Jumpers, Ancient Aurora-class battleships, ''the city of Atlantis'', and ''an asteroid''.
** In the GrandFinale, Dr. Carson Beckett (a physician) manages to not only fly the titular city but also engage in a battle with the Super-hive and successfully almost crash-land the city in the San Francisco Bay, with hardly a tiny wave from the splash-down. This is the same guy (or rather, his clone) who had trouble controlling ''anything'' with the control chair prior to the mission and didn't really get much training in the meantime. Could be justified by the fact that it's mainly the city flying itself with Beckett just giving overall commands.
%%* Lieutenant Matthew Scott in ''Series/StargateUniverse'' is able to fly the shuttle aboard ''Destiny.''
* In ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', if it weren't for Wash's piloting skills the crew of ''Serenity'' would have been captured, dead or worse several times. Mal even calls him a 'genius pilot' at one point, and it's noted several high profile people courted him before he signed on with ''Serenity''. He's done a flat spin in atmosphere, successfully docked the ship with a space station, unpowered, from 6000 miles out, barnstormed down a snowy canyon, and in the movie ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', he flies their tiny ship through a titanic battle without a scratch and manages to crashland it safely, even after losing one engine and getting hit by an EMP weapon.
** "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar!"

* Tom Paris in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. While this can be explained by the universal controls on all Starfleet ships and shuttles (and the one Starfleet shuttle with nonstandard controls has a cockpit of Paris's own design, so that's not exactly going to trip him up), he was still able to pull off some incredible maneuvers, such as putting his shuttle in one of the ''Voyager'''s blind spots when the ship was hijacked.
* ''Series/AirCrashInvestigation'': The series covers actual incidents that have occurred in aviation, a number of which feature pilots having to control aircraft under highly unusual and dangerous circumstances. Several of the incidents are listed under RealLife.

* ''Series/{{Intergalactic}}'': Echo is a very skilled pilot, matter of factly saying he'll fly the ship with just one thruster while riding out the turbulence (he does).

* Some ace pilots in [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Aeronautica Imperialis]], who can use pilot skill checks to miraculously survive when their chosen maneuver would put their plane at below stall speed or at altitude 0 ([[WronskiFeint otherwise known as 'the ground']]). Especially awesome when a bomber pilot pulls off an insane maneuver.

* Games with sufficiently ''broad'' skills can easily end up with the "If it flies..." version by definition -- if handling everything airborne falls under the purview of a general-purpose "Pilot" or even "Vehicles" trait, then of course anyone in the game who can fly, say, a Cessna can fly anything else just as well (or poorly, depending on the individual in question).

* The Speed Demon [[PrestigeClass Advanced Class]] from ''TabletopGame/D20Modern Urban Arcana'', who uses [[AWizardDidIt explicitly supernatural enhancements]], falls under Aerody-whatsit? (due to outright reducing speed penalties to piloting skills), Reinforced Plot Armor due to having the class ability to apply their own Defense bonus to the vehicle they are piloting, making it almost untouchable at higher levels, and Three Times Faster than a Normal Zaku due to possessing a class ability that improves the top speed of any vehicle they are currently piloting by 25%.

* The ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' crank up the skill [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Amuro Ray]] displayed in the series to a ridiculous degree, to the point where even the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s let alone every anime's cast recognize him as one of if not THE most badass person in the universe (Which he shares with people like [[Manga/GetterRobo Ryouma]], [[Anime/MazingerZ Kouji]], and pretty much every sort of god-like SuperRobot ever so that says A LOT while he's piloting a [[RealRobot GUNDAM]].) [[GameBreaker His stats reflect this.]]
** To say nothing of [[Anime/GreatMazinger Tetsuya Tsurugi]] who have been broken in several games, and being considered as TheAce of the group(and yes, this is the same group with several badass from mecha anime on it).

* On a larger scale, NonActionGuy Joker in ''Franchise/MassEffect'' claims to be able to make the CoolStarship ''Normandy'' sit up and dance. He proves he's not exaggerating when, among other accomplishments, he swoops down from orbit and drops a TANK in a narrow street, not 30 feet from the main villain without scratching it at all, while facing hostile fire and then swooping back up into orbit with no problems. He ''is'' the best pilot in TheAlliance, after all.
** He pulls a [[Franchise/StarWars Han Solo]] in [[VideoGame/MassEffect2 the sequel]] when he flies through an entirely unmapped debris field close to a black hole (the ship had strong protection), ensuring the Normandy took barely any damage.
** Joker comments that banking in a vacuum is actually really hard, but he's just that good. He was probably exaggerating to promote himself. Regardless, he's one of the best human pilots alive, if not the singular best. Makes you wonder how someone with weak bones can pull that many G's, but when you accept the Mass Effect itself, you can pretty much handwave most of physics quite comfortably.
* An earlier Creator/BioWare example was Carth Onasi of ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic''. Flying a damaged escape pod and managing to crash it in the "good" part of town, flying through at least one Sith blockade, a dramatic escape from the Sith flagship ''Leviathan,'' no less than five Sith patrols, and setting down on Lehon, despite having most of the ''Hawk's'' engines and systems crippled by the planet's defense shield (the place they land is pretty much a starship graveyard with hundreds of ships fallen over he centuries). Atton in the second game also flies the ''Ebon Hawk'' and several shuttles through overwhelming blockades and hostile fire. [[spoiler: Atton is confirmed to be a Force sensitive and drawing on it subconsciously to help him fly. There are several hints in-game saying this ''could'' apply to Carth as well.]]
* Another example would be Kang the Mad in ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'', though it's mostly a case of his flying machines probably shouldn't be getting off the ground at all, and he's piloting them with ease. [[spoiler: Justified in that he's an amnesiac minor deity.]]
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** Captain Keyes is guilty of this, to the point of turning down Cortana's offer to figuring out the controls of the alien aircraft they're pirating in favor of doing it himself; he proceeds to take down two Hunters with it before flying off. That said, it's very possible that he's piloted alien craft before, as he's had some adventures in the past (to say the least).
** However, Keyes is best known for the "[[http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Keyes_Loop Keyes Loop]]", where he defeated a force of four superior Covenant ships with just his one, with one part involving ''charging straight past a Covenant destroyer so that the plasma torpedoes chasing his ship would hit the destroyer instead''. Of course, fighting in space allows you to pull off all sorts of maneuvers that you wouldn't be able to do in an atmosphere.
** In some games (notably ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'') vehicles can only be destroyed by killing the player - making this a surprisingly literal example of the extending-shields aspect of this trope.
* Katana in ''VideoGame/ProjectSylpheed'' for Xbox 360. At the beginning of the game, it's nigh-suicide to take on a trio of destroyers. If you, the player, actually manage to do it, you get a special conversation where Katana's commanding officer exclaims that it was one of the most awesomely psychotic things he's ever seen anyone do, but he doesn't want to see Katana do it again. By the end of the game, you're taking on ships a hundred times the size of your ''support ship'', and it's all okay because, as one copilot puts it, "we've got Katana!"
* ''VideoGame/AceCombat'' has this in spades. Beyond the HyperspaceArsenal, your character is easily capable of taking down multiple squadrons at once, while attacking ground forces, and avoiding their combined fire. Hard turns at over 1000 mph? Check. Flying the A-10 and F-117 well beyond supersonic in level flight? Check. Being capable of surviving multiple missile strikes? Check. Hell, if you do it gently enough, you can fly into, and seemingly bounce off of, the ground and water.
** Introduced in VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown are Post-Stall Maneuvers, which are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermaneuverability the real life version]] of this trope. However, skilled enough players can exploit the unique physics scenario to do the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLqd8mxyQ84 downright]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFUWjjB3YUg impossible]].

* [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII Sazh freakin' Katzroy.]] The first time he gets into a plane in-story, he does a HighSpeedMissileDodge before the bad guys hit him. And he's a ''civilian pilot'', so it's anybody's guess how he learned to dodge anything in the first place. Also a mild offender of If It Flies.
* The ''VideoGame/StarFox'' series picks and chooses which tropes to use. Most common are My Missiles Are Better, Eyes Of An Eagle and White Hole engines. Interestingly, some of the others are subverted - multiple times, especially in 64, you have to boost to catch up to enemies, or brake to avoid them.
** 64 subverts the 3x Faster rule too in the Hard version of Venom: Team Star Wolf has ships that have about as much armour as the arwings, and are considerably faster, to the point where it's difficult to use the traditional manveuring tricks to get behind one that's tailing you, and even then, you only have a couple of seconds to get a shot off.
* The If It Flies rule is present in ''VideoGame/TachyonTheFringe'', as [[Creator/BruceCampbell Jake]] cam go from a barely-fliable Mako to a top-of-the-line Archangel without any training.
** Hell, the [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]] claims he single-handedly saved the shuttle him and his family were taking by piloting it... as a teenager with no prior experience.
* ''VideoGame/EveOnline'' is possibly the poster child for this trope. Although it does take time (lots and lots of time), you can fly any ship, from 747-sized frigates to Titans that are MILES long. And enhance their capabilities just by virtue of being ''that damn good''. Make your weapons more damaging, faster firing, more accurate and longer ranged? Check. Make your ship tougher, faster, more agile and more powerful (in a literal, 'generate more power from the powerplant' way)? Check. And most importantly, do all of the above without actually adding anything to the ship? Big check. Particularly jarring when you consider that this can happen in the middle of a fight if a skill completes at the right time.
** You hit the nail on the head though: While you CAN fly anything in the game, it takes weeks or even months (real time) to actually learn all of the necessary skills...and that's only to be able to pilot it with the efficiency of a drunken whale. Not to mention your ship is always a highly customized piece of equipment, and finishing a skill amounts to learning how to tweak something to get a tiny bit more performance out of it...ya know, kind of like how most people customize things in real life.
* ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'' has Chocolat, a thirteen-year-old girl who's capable of flying a huge, chunky airship (think "flying home base", not fighter plane) through a BeamSpam and [[DeathFromAbove drop her brother]] onto a relatively small target without so much as singeing the paint on her ship.
* In ''Videogame/MechWarrior Living Legends'', aerospace fighters behave somewhat like a real plane - provided you ''fly it like one''. Ace pilots rely on exploiting the wonky aircraft physics, such as flying a Sparrowhawk scout plane at 30 kph upside-down mere meters from the ground, or by cutting the throttle while hammering the pitch/roll/yaw controls, causing the plane to turn on a dime in mid air. It's possible to land planes on each other or have [[PoweredArmor battlearmor]] ride on the wings (albeit very prone to [[TeleFrag ending in disaster]]). Planes will bounce harmlessly off [[HumongousMecha battlemech]] torsos (but nothing else), allowing pilots to literally ricochet themselves out of danger. Additionally, planes suffer no consequences for flying underwater or in space, the latter courtesy of [[SpacePlane all in-game aircraft being both atmospheric and vacuum flight-capable]]
* Averted in ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' due to fan opposition. Developers had proposed making experienced pilot Kerbals bring boosts to rocket engine performance. Negative reaction from the fanbase resulted in the idea being scrapped. Although the game still has it share of Aerody-whatsit, it's the same whatever Kerbal is in the command pod.

* While Anakin Skywalker is reportedly one of the best pilots in ''Franchise/StarWars'', it's not until the CGI ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' movie where we see him commandeer ''a flying bug'' and an [[TheAllegedCar Alleged Spaceship]] ''and pull it off both times''.
* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'' has Launchpad [=McQuack=], who has the {{Catchphrase}} "If it has wings, I can crash it." He can fly anything -- even live animals, untested technology, and [[Recap/DuckTalesS1E4WhereNoDuckHasGoneBefore alien spaceships with controls not designed for his species]] -- with excellent skill. [[CaptainCrash The only thing he can't do is land]]. He appears to have overcome this problem by ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'', or else maybe the [[CoolPlane Thunderquack]] just has auto pilot landing skills, or a thoroughly reinforced hull.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'':
** General Iroh manages to fly a biplane within moments of hijacking it. This was the first time he had ever encountered such a machine in his life and had zero training in it, yet despite a rocky start he manages to get it in control and dogfight in it.
** If it can be driven or piloted, Asami Sato can drive it. She's an expert biplane pilot who can strafe enemy encampments with, at most, six months of study.

* Shane Gooseman in ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'' can pull off maneuvers in an interceptor that are physically impossible for humans. The good thing is that [[SuperSoldier he's not exactly human]]. The bad thing is that he [[DrivesLikeCrazy drives]] ''exactly'' the same way he flies.
* Aerrow in ''WesternAnimation/StormHawks'' will perform at least one crazy and/or suicidal maneuver per episode if he has a chance to fly his skimmer or use its motorcycle alt. mode and succeed with style. At various points he's managed to outfly the opposition on broken-down or otherwise rusted-over vehicles barely held together. He's even surfed on a vehicle's thruster like it was a skateboard!
* In the ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'' special "Back to Bortron 7", Celery assigns Sydney the role of the co-pilot of the Mothership. Sydney figures out how to steer the mothership almost instantaneously. This continues into the regular season 2 episodes as well. In "Souped Up Saucer", Sydney becomes the {{Wingman}} of the flying saucer, proving herself to be just as skilled a pilot as she was in "Back to Bortron 7".

Planes and most flying things tend to be fragile: if an [[Redshirt unnamed character’s craft]] or a [[DisposablePilot or a minor character's cargo plane]] is so much as nicked by a slingshot's pebble, it will explode in a fiery conflagration. Not so the hero's craft, of course. Once he climbs aboard, any Personal PlotArmor he happens to be wearing is transferred to it and indeed quite possibly boosted. His craft may be [[ArtisticLicenseEngineering missing a wing, so full of holes it looks like a sieve, and with one engine out]], and he’ll still manage to shoot down five enemies with it before making an emergency landing. (Note that the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-17-battle-casualty1.gif B-17]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II the Warthog]] are TruthInTelevision.)

This pilot has extremely high intelligence, has excellent 3D perception skills and can estimate distances, altitudes, times and velocities in a split second. He can perform mental calculations in a snap of fingers and estimate what kind of manoeuvres are needed to perform a certain feat. He is usually excellent on aerodynamics and what is possible and what not, and eager to take calculated risks which seem impossible for the laymen.

Planes and most flying things tend to be fragile: if an unnamed character’s craft is so much as nicked by a slingshot's pebble, it will explode in a fiery conflagration. Not so the hero's craft, of course. Once he climbs aboard, any Personal PlotArmor he happens to be wearing is transferred to it and indeed quite possibly boosted. His craft may be missing a wing, so full of holes it looks like a sieve, and with one engine out, and he’ll still manage to shoot down five enemies with it before making an emergency landing. (Note that the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-17-battle-casualty1.gif B-17]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II the Warthog]] are TruthInTelevision.)

In science fiction a pilot will often fly his spacecraft [[OldSchoolDogfight as if it were a terrestrial airplane]], especially using banking turns. In a vacuum, any controllable acceleration has to come from the ship's thrusters, so changing the ship's orientation alone won't do anything to the ship's speed or direction of movement.

While these powers, particularly "If it flies", can occur alone, they're normally part of a package deal that is free for any hero whose main mode of combat is aerial warfare of some kind. Less important characters may be allowed weaker versions of these, but the highest grades are the domain of the main protagonist (and probably his obligatory rival) alone. This aerial awesomeness may be counterbalanced if they're GracefulInTheirElement and clumsy outside of it.

The hero's plane is not bothered by concepts such as drag, stall, or lack of thrust. He can throw his craft about the sky in an often physics-defying manner with no repercussions. This also applies to ships that are an aerodynamic nightmare which would, in reality, have trouble getting off the ground, never mind back flipping at mach 2.

The pilot will not run low on fuel. [[BottomlessMagazines Magazines are]] [[HyperspaceArsenal bottomless]], except for [[DramaticAmmoDepletion dramatic effect]]. As a corollary to '''Reinforced Plot Armor''', electrical, hydraulic, motor, and other related systems do not show signs of wear or damage, regardless of how long the device is used, or in what conditions.

It doesn't matter what sort of machine it is - so long as it can fly, he can pilot it like a pro. Be it a glider, ultra light, single engine Cessna, mach 50 transforming super fighter, or alien spacecraft, [[InstantExpert just give him five minutes and he'll figure it out]]. This also applies to when the pilot receives their mid-series upgrade. There's never any mention of the months of retraining needed to fly it... At best he's maybe a little clumsy for one episode, or if not, just as likely to blast off in it to save the day against impossible odds [[UniversalDriversLicense five minutes after he first sees the thing]].

*** However, Gravity Shmavity is notably averted. During the Dog Fight sequence, both Isamu and Guld are noticeably straining to avoid blacking out. Also [[spoiler: in the movie, Guld dies due to the ''very insanely'' extreme G's he goes under while fighting the Ghost X-9.]]

** Zigzagged with [[Anime/MacrossDelta Hayate Immelman]]. In his first time piloting a Variable Fighter, he's already able to dodge close-range BeamSpam with ''breakdancing''. However, he was already a skilled civilian mecha pilot who was familiar with the control scheme used in [=VFs=]. Additionally, while he's an excellent ''mecha'' pilot, he has zero experience at piloting ''aircraft'', which results in him getting shot down almost the instant he transforms his VF into jet fighter mode.

* ''Anime/DokiDokiPrecure'': This is pretty much the only explanation as to why Alice (aka Cure Rosetta), a 14 year old, is capable of piloting a space shuttle. A space shuttle that she ''personally'' owns.
* Hakura/Sailor Uranus of ''Anime/SailorMoon'' is a champion-level racer in an improbably-wide variety of motor vehicles, including sports cars, Formula 1, road motorcycles, motorcross, and even ''helicopters''. Her EstablishingCharacterMoment has her playing Minako in a racing video game, and overcoming a MercyLead so fast her tailwind capsizes the other car. Theoretically, this could have been based on some kind of physics engine exploit, but no explanation is provided--Haruka's vehicle just seemed to be inherently faster because she was controlling it.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* Miles Mayhem, the BigBad from ''WesternAnimation/{{MASK}}'' has a helicopter that transforms into a fighter jet. He pilots both modes expertly and even has the precision to fly the vehicle into caves.

-->'''Baloo''': If you can't fly, don't mess with the eagles!
* [[Franchise/StarWars Anakin Skywalker.]] Reportedly one of the best pilots in the movieverse, it's not till the CGI ''[[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars Clone Wars]]'' movie where we see him commandeer ''a flying bug'' and an [[TheAllegedCar Alleged Spaceship]] ''and pull it off both times''.
* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'' has Launchpad [=McQuack=], who has the CatchPhrase "If it has wings, I can crash it." He can fly anything - even live animals, untested technology, and [[Recap/DuckTalesS1E4WhereNoDuckHasGoneBefore alien spaceships with controls not designed for his species]] - with excellent skill. [[CaptainCrash The only thing he can't do is land.]] He appears to have overcome this problem by ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'', or else maybe the [[CoolPlane Thunderquack]] just has auto pilot landing skills, or a thoroughly reinforced hull.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', General Iroh manages to fly a biplane within moments of hijacking it. This was the first time he had ever encountered such a machine in his life and had zero training in it, yet despite a rocky start he manages to get it in control and dogfight in it.

* Shane Gooseman in ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'' can pull off maneuvers in an interecptor that are physically impossible for humans. [[ArtificialHuman Good thing he's]] [[SuperSoldier not exactly human.]] Bad thing is that he [[DrivesLikeCrazy drives ''exactly'' the same way he flies]]
* Aerrow in ''WesternAnimation/StormHawks'' will perform at least one crazy and/or suicidal maneuver per episode if he has a chance to fly his skimmer or use its motorcycle alt. mode, and succeed with style. At various points he's managed to outfly the opposition on broken-down or otherwise rusted-over vehicles barely held together. He's even surfed on a vehicle's thruster like it was a skateboard!

* In ''Anime/TheSkyCrawlers: Innocent Aces'', main character Lynx/Cheetah demonstrates the ability to perform post-stall maneuvers such as the Kulbit, which explicitly require thrust vectoring because they are by their very nature maneuvers that cannot be performed with purely aerodynamic forces, in a piston-engined fighter, which cannot possibly have anything like thrust vectoring. Even for an exceptionally skilled pilot, this should be impossible.

[[folder: Radio]]

*** This is more improbable than it seems at first glance. Most commercial airline pilots would not know how to perform a forward slip. It just so happens that, prior to becoming an airline pilot, Bob Pearson was a glider pilot with a great deal of experience. The passengers were ''really'' lucky. If anyone else had been at the controls, they would've crashed. In fact, in future simulations where the pilot crew taking the simulation were given the circumstances that the Gimli Glider had, ''all'' attempts resulted in failures.

** United Flight 232. A DC-10's rear engine blew its turbine and knocked out the hydraulic lines, which meant the plane had lost all the control surfaces. The pilot and copilot, assisted by a flight instructor who happened to be onboard and was kneeling between the pilots, managed to control the plane just by varying thrust on the two remaining engines, and managed to crash land it in Sioux falls. Over half the passengers (185 out of 285) managed to survive, which is impressive given the circumstances.

*** Unlike most pilots on the list however, these guys were heavily assisted by the plane itself. Prior to this incident, Airbus had decided to [[CrazyPrepared install software on some of its planes]] that would assist the flight crew in the event of a total hydraulics failure. While the plane still required balls made of titanium to fly at that point, the pilots still managed to land the thing safely... [[FromBadToWorse only for the aircraft to slide off the runway and into a field of]] [[OhCrap Unexploded Ordinance.]]

** The Speedbird 9 incident of 1982. British Airways flight 9 was cruising near Jakarta when it encountered a strange kind of St. Elmo's Fire which seemed to envelop the plane in white lights. Shortly thereafter, all the engines failed. The 747 was now a 800,000+ lb glider. With only so much time before they hit the ocean, the crew abbreviated the engine restart procedure to give them more chances. Finally, the engines started back up and the plane turned back to Jakarta. Not long after, however, one of the engines started backfiring and had to be shut down. As they approached the airport, the pilot noticed he could barely see out the windscreen, and, proving FinaglesLaw is at work, the guidance equipment on the ground was not working. He had to land using only a tiny sliver of glass on one side that was clear enough to see through. The reason? They'd been flying through a volcanic ash cloud. The plane had literally been sand blasted at 500 miles an hour!
** British Airways copilot Alister Atchison managed to pull off a textbook landing in a substantially overweight plane, by himself, at an airport he'd never flown to before, while beside him the flight attendants were holding onto the captain, who had been sucked most of the way out of the plane in an explosive decompression. The only injuries were to the captain himself (though he miraculously survived) and one flight attendant who was minorly injured while holding onto him.

* [[WesternAnimation/TaleSpin Baloo]]. He possesses all the aforementioned skills sans one (the [[CoolPlane Seaduck]] isn't armed with missiles... unless you count [[EdibleAmmunition thrown fruit]]. [[ImprobableAimingSkills Which he's a pretty good shot with, anyway.]]) He figured out the world's very first, prototype helicopter and JetPack in just a few minutes, despite them being so revolutionary for his 1930s-style world that he had never been trained or even SEEN them in his life. His beloved Sea Duck, [[WhatAPieceOfJunk an old, rusty and unwieldy cargo plane]], is [[AceCustom customized up the wazoo]], making it faster and [[WronskiFeint more maneuverable]] than the [[SkyPirates Air Pirates]]' zippy miniplanes, to the point only Baloo can pilot it to its full potential. He can withstand the immense G-forces from said plane's OverDrive, which is heavily implied to be a supersonic drive designed by Wildcat and Baloo himself (and remember, these are ''propeller engines'' [[NitroBoost spinning hard enough to go supersonic]].) He can [[CatchAFallingStar catch small objects (and people) mid-fall]], while [[ExplosiveOverclocking flying at top speed]], just by reaching out the window, and [[InertialDampening they're not even hurt when he yanks them in with his bare hand]]. He can fly [[AerialCanyonChase into caves and cracks in cliff-faces barely wider than his plane, through rainforests, through a skyscraper-filled city, under bridges, and into]] ''[[AerialCanyonChase highway tunnels]]'', the ends of his wings scratching and scraping the walls, and fly out without incident even as the aforementioned miniplanes (about a tenth the size of the Sea Duck) smash and crash. He can [[RammingAlwaysWorks kamikaze into]] {{Wave Motion Gun}}s ''as they fire at him'' AND glide the resulting wingless hull of a plane safely enough to save everyone on board. If a plane is missing the yoke, he can fly it by yanking the control cables directly. With his ''teeth''. To top it all off, he once flew a prototype jet engine past the speed of sound. We say again: a jet ''engine'', not a jet ''plane''. As in, a turbine that wasn't attached to ''anything''. And [[RocketRide he flew it successfully just by hanging for dear life and tugging on it to change course]], proving that he doesn't even need wings to fly. Oh and he was officially acknowledged as the first person to break the sound barrier in his world, while riding on the engine. So even when he gloats, no one blames him for it. He has earned it:

* Comedy ensemble show ''Radio/TheMaryWhiteHouseExperience'' subverted this trope. A sketch noted that as the skills required to pilot a modern jet fighter in combat were converging more and more with those necessary to succeed in air-fighting computer games, the next generation of RAF aces were not going to be craggy manly ''Literature/{{Biggles}}'' types. Oh, no. A sketch followed through the recruitment and training of UpToEleven spotty, geeky, teenage nerds into the Royal Air Force, who all became fighter aces in an unspecified war somewhere.

* The ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' [[UpToEleven crank up the skill]] [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Amuro Ray]] displayed in the series to a [[UpToEleven ridiculous degree]], to the point where even the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s let alone every anime's cast recognize him as one of if not THE most badass person in the universe (Which he shares with people like [[Manga/GetterRobo Ryouma]], [[Anime/MazingerZ Kouji]], and pretty much every sort of god-like SuperRobot ever so that says A LOT while he's piloting a [[RealRobot GUNDAM]].) [[GameBreaker His stats reflect this.]]

* The ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' [[UpToEleven crank up the skill]] [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Amuro Ray]] displayed in the series to a [[UpToEleven ridiculous degree]], to the point where even the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s let alone every anime's cast recognize him as one of if not THE the most badass person in the universe (Which he shares with people like [[Manga/GetterRobo Ryouma]], [[Anime/MazingerZ Kouji]], and pretty much every sort of god-like SuperRobot ever so that says A LOT while he's piloting a [[RealRobot GUNDAM]].) [[GameBreaker His stats reflect this.]]

* This is the schtick of Kevin "Ace" Koss in Fred Perry's ''ComicBook/GoldDigger''. Pulling a CurbStompBattle against a squadron of enemy pilots (all of them veteran fighter aces, all of them using technologically superior fighters--and with his weapons ''mostly non-functional'') is [[ButForMeItWasTuesday just a typical adventure with the Diggers sisters]]. His rivals (and one unwanted StalkerWithACrush) Roxanne "Dark Bird" Rabinowitz and Skipper "Skippy" [[TheVonTropeFamily von]] [[ShoutOut Rich]][[TheRedBaron tofen]] are just as good--and the only people who can make any of them break a sweat in a dogfight is either of the other two.

*** The incident in which the pilot, Carlos Dardano, lost his eye also qualifies. Upon landing on a rural airstrip in El Salvador, Dardano inadvertantly ended up in the crossfire of the country's raging civil war and was shot in the face. Gravely injured and with a hole where his eye had been minutes earlier, Dardano nonetheless got back in the cockpit of his plane and flew himself and his passengers 20 minutes to safety.

* '''SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay'''\\

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' of Creator/AAPessimal, Olga Romanoff has become Captain Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch Air Division and the Pegasus Service. The Air Division is probably the nearest thing Ankh-Morpork has to a combat Air Force, and is composed of witches with a particular interest and aptitude in flying. [[TheBaroness Olga]] realises that her deal with flight is like Jason Ogg's bargain with blacksmithing - if you aspire to be the greatest flying witch on the Discworld, then you have to be prepared to fly ''anything'', however ludicrous and pointless and potentially dangerous it is. Olga is therefore skilled in a dozen different types of broomstick, flying carpets, the {{Pegasus}}, the yarrow stalk of the elves, and the [[Literature/BabaYaga mortar and pestle]] of her own [[UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} people]]. In her most recent appearance (July 2019), Olga has branched out into mastering heavy air-capable craft...[[Film/{{Dumbo}} Osibisi]]. Winged elephants.

* Creator/JohnRingo's characters tend to be larger than life, but in [[Literature/TroyRising Citadel]] and [[Literature/TroyRising The Hot Gate]] [[Main/AcePilot Dana "Comet" Parker]] stands out for her flying skills. After a fair amount of training, on her first mission she accelerated into the landing zone (she was being chased by missiles), executed a skew turn (on her first try) to decelerate, and barely survived smashing into the far wall before dropping into the landing zone as her craft lost all power. The people watching this were debating whether to give her a medal for such skill or a [[Main/CourtMartialed Mast]] for being utterly insane. Later she accelerates into another landing zone and the decelerates at 400 gravities (Ringo goes on and on about how Earth based equipment cannot accomplish 400 gravities even with head-on collisions) with such skill that she comes to an almost dead stop exactly on the landing zone "with a slight bump". The people watching were openly screaming in terror as they saw her heading towards them at incredible speeds, convinced that she was going to crash and kill them all.

* Suzaku from ''Anime/CodeGeass'' is guilty of If it flies..., Gravity Smavity!, and Reinforced Plot Armor.

* While about 90% of ImprobablePilotingSkills in ''Anime/StrikeWitches'' can be attributed to the Strikers being magical, some of the feats are still improbable. Mainly, The Eyes of An Eagle and White Hole Engines, Inc.

The pilot will not run low on fuel. [[BottomlessMagazines Magazines are]] [[HyperspaceArsenal bottomless]], except for [[OneBulletLeft dramatic effect]]. As a corollary to '''Reinforced Plot Armor''', electrical, hydraulic, motor, and other related systems do not show signs of wear or damage, regardless of how long the device is used, or in what conditions.

* Kai Tak Airport, the former international airport of Hong Kong before it was replaced with a new airport elsewhere in 1998, ''mandated'' this for its unique [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Tak_Airport#Runway_13_approach Runway 13 approach]], known as the "Kai Tak Heart [[RhymesOnADime Attack]]." Due to airport being surrounded by hills, pilots would have to manually make the last leg of the approach, which includes a sharp right turn at less than 1,000 feet, exiting with less than 200 feet to spare, flying low enough for passengers and crew alike to get the cold sweats as they notice that they're low enough to even see into apartment windows. Doing this in strong winds was even worse, as turning naturally changes the wind direction relative to the plane, making it much harder to line up correctly in time to touch down on the runway and not the Victoria Harbour surrounding it.