This is ultimately why I gave up my private pilots license.
My dad spent 20 years as an active fighter pilot (no combat though). When people asked him why he didn't have a private pilot's license, he always said he thought those small planes were too dangerous and he had a family. His fighter jets all had ceilings well over 30,000 feet, all manner of instruments, ejection seats, wing deicers and at least the later ones were supersonic. He would always say that if he ran into weather, he just put the nose up and fly above almost anything. And anything he could fly above, he could outrun. If he lost his instruments in the mountains, he could just go up to 25,000 feet an know there was no mountain North America that would kill him. Et cetera. But in a small plane, the storm can catch you, or if you want to go over the mountains, you might need to find a pass because the highest peaks are over your operational ceiling. He didn't like that.
Ironically, he and I were talking one evening about wingsuiting and I told him how my friend had said it was so mellow (and how I did not believe him). Referring to my friend the wingsuiter and his friend who had an engine fire at only about 1,500 feet off the deck, he said "The problem with that is you're too low and have no margin for error. One mistake and you're dead. If Bob Goyette had been at 15,000 feet when his engine caught fire, he would be alive today."
The next morning, I got the news my friend had crashed and died.
