"Teacherjh" wrote in message
...
I didn't take "their" to be that restrictive

There can be no question that CJ's comment was with regards to airplane
owners. I simply referenced Shawn's post for context.

and also maintain that flying a
variety of aircraft makes one more able to jump between them.

That's an interesting theory, but not borne out by my own flying, nor those
that I have talked to who fly a variety of aircraft. When I spend time in
other aircraft (mostly C172s and C177s), my performance in my own airplane
as well as those other types suffers.

Likewise, the instructors I've asked about how they handle the variety of
aircraft they fly have told me that a major problem for them is that, while
they are perfectly safe in all of the aircraft they fly, they don't have the
finesse they'd like in any of them, because they're constantly switching
back and forth.

I can't prove that your theory is incorrect, but I doubt you could prove
that it's correct. I do know my own statistically insignificant experiences
argue against the theory.

There is an
implication in the quote that "most people don't know how to fly"

The quote is out of context and misrepresented. If you'd like to address a
different issue, that's fine, but your comments so far haven't been relevant
to CJ's original reply.

[...] One comes to rely on the charactaristics of "their particular
plane"
and that may reduce safety outside the envelope.

There's no doubt that a pilot who flies a plane with which they are
unfamiliar may well have inappropriate transfer from the plane with which
they ARE familiar. But that's not what is being discussed. The question
here is whether pilots know how to fly the plane with which they are
familiar.

Pete