I guess I was about 12 when my brother suggested that I might want to become a professional pilot. Sorry. Never grabbed me. Love to watch planes fly, especially the fast ones. Just never had any interest in actually flying for a living, though I have a lot of respect for those who do. Even back then, I knew it took a special skill and a real attention to detail. I have heard those who say that the small aircraft are not that much more difficult than driving a car. Even back then, I knew that wasn’t true. Now even more so.
When I was in the marines, my job was maintenance on navigation and radios. I learned a lot from that job. Having to work on the navigation equipment required me to learn how they work and a little on how to use them. Later, I purchased a MS flight simulator. Again I learned quite a bit about flying. I watched by simulation how to use the navigation equipment and got good at it.
As a side note, I got to see a lot of simulated scenery. It was the one thing that would encourage me to try to fly. When I laid in a course from Seattle to LA one time, I was really awed. Made me wish I could make the flight for real.
I found a statement by the flight simulator remarkable. “All takeoffs are optional. All landings are mandatory.” I must admit it made me laugh. I suspect it is something that every flight student is told in one way or the other pretty much at the beginning.
It is an important point. I suspect any person can be quickly taught how to fly a plane straight and level. A little more training and a person might even be able to pilot a plane from one place to another. In those regards it probably isn’t that much more difficult than a car.
However, before a person can really be considered a pilot, he must be able to get a plane into the air and land it successful. And, again, all landings are mandatory. Eventually, the plane will run out of gas and it will have to come down, one way or the other.
Another thing suggested by the flight simulator is that, when landing, every foot of runway behind you will do you no good. There is an ideal touchdown point. A good pilot will put the plane down close to that point. It will give him plenty of time to bring the plane to a speed slow enough to taxi off the runway and over to the taxi ways.
On the flight simulator, I tried landing a 747. It was fun. I walked away from every landing. However, in each case the simulated 747 was a wreck. You must understand that there are three specific things that make landing a 747 more difficult than the proverbial Cessna. That Cessna likely lands at around 70, perhaps as slow as 60 mph. 747s land at somewhere around 150, about twice as fast. It not only makes it more difficult but everything happens at least twice as fast. Those feet I spoke of earlier go by in the blink of eye.
Jet engines are much more difficult to control. When you change the throttle, it may take 5 or 6 seconds for the engine to settle at the new power. In other words, the pilot must learn to anticipate the engines. My experience with the 747 was that this was the most difficult part. As I approached, I kept having to adjust the throttle. Experienced pilots rarely need to make significant changes.
There is one more thing for sure. Piloting a 747 requires teamwork. It is why they require two citified pilots. Generally, one pilot lands the plane. The other takes care of all the other stuff so as the pilot doesn’t have to take his eyes off the effort to put the plane down safely and smoothly.
Even with two pilots, things happen fast. At the appropriate times, the flaps need to be readjusted, the landing gear needs to be lowered and fine adjustments need to be made to the power. Also adjustments must be made for wind gusts and such.
Contrary to what many think, at least during landing, the throttle controls decent. The nose pitch controls the speed. These are certainly primary controls for landings. However, the ailerons must also be used to control the direction. When wind is involved, then the ruder figures in too.
Then, at just the right time, of course, reverse thrust must be applied or the plane will go off the other end of the runway. That little Cessna doesn’t have reverse thrusters. It is another complication for the 747 pilots.
Over the years, many additions have been added for landing an aircraft. Bottom line, that pilot must be able to land the plane without them. If they fail, the pilot must still land the plane. Remember. The landing is not optional. You cannot call off the landing because some part of the plane stopped working.

As an aside, I tried many times to fly the MS helicopter. I realized quickly that those machines try to crash and it is the pilot’s job to keep them from it. I am not going to try to explain it all. I certainly don’t understand it myself.
However, many years after trying it, I ran into a former friend who was a chopper pilot in the Army and still flies them, or at least he did last time I talked to him. We talked for a while. Then I started to bring up the subject of the MS chopper and he interrupted me. “Don’t worry, I can’t fly it either.”
It told me that the MS chopper was not all that realistic if a very experienced helicopter pilot can’t fly it. Still, I imagine the real ones are very difficult. I don’t think I’m going to try it.