Flying isn’t hard. The plane wants to fly—punch the power at the end of the runway, and, chances are it will take off and fly without a whole lot of input on the controls.

Landing is hard at first. I think I made 20–30 approaches before I finally put wheels on pavement by myself.

Navigating can be tricky, but I’ve only gotten lost once so far.

So what’s hard?

This.

That’s your view out the windscreen. A beginning VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilot like me, flying into a cloud bank, statistically has less than 3 minutes left to live.

Not only can you not see where you are or where you’re going, you literally cannot trust your senses to tell you which way is up. I scoffed at this idea when I first heard about it, but when it came time for me to put on the foggles (special glasses that restrict your view to the instruments) I just about threw up—my body thought we were leaned over 20 degrees, even when my instruments said we were dead level—and I had to trust the instrument. I had to actively ignore a built-in sense my body had that had been keeping me safe for 40+ years.

Learning to tune in the right radio frequencies, and correctly follow a pair of wavering needles down to within 200 feet of the ground—that’s hard. Especially when you already know what 200 feet looks like, and you’re praying you’ll see the runway any second now, before you slam into it.

Being able to do this is called instrument flying, and it’s a huge part of what makes scheduled airline travel possible.