Airline pilots have a significant chunk coming from the military (that's the cheapest way to pay for training and 1,500 hours of experience needed), so the cult

Airline pilots have a significant chunk coming from the military (that's the cheapest way to pay for training and 1,500 hours of experience needed), so the culture has a lot in common with military aviation. The key trait I'm thinking of here here is owning up to your mistakes and not trying to cover anything up. Making an honest mistake is almost never punished, to encourage people to come forward. The thinking is that known mistakes can be fixed, but unknown mistakes may put someone else in danger. If someone is worried about being punished then they might be less likely to come forward, and that can put lives in danger in the future. This is intended for things like over-G'ing a jet. If you pull too many G's then maintenance has to inspect everything, which makes them angry and takes the jet off the flying schedule. But it's better to do the inspection than to have the wings fall off when another pilot is flying the next day. The end result of this culture is that military pilots (who then filter into the airlines) don't get punished for some things that you might think they would (such as being a little too forward). It would be better if he said something non-PC (like "I suck at flying") if the alternative is him being afraid to speak up. When a pilot exhibits seemingly contradictory behavior, it can usually be traced back to a tradition or training. They are often very raunchy in private, but extremely professional over the radio. There are some rules that they break every day, but there are other rules that they won't break even if it means losing their job. Nobody wants to hear a pilot downplay their abilities, but I'd prefer an honest pilot to one who falsely believes they are superman. The fact is that roughly half of airline pilots are below average (of all airline pilots), and they usually get to where they are going safely. But this guy was/is a chief technical pilot at Boeing, and probably knows this plane better than 99% of all airline pilots, so he was probably just trying not to sound like an overconfident jerk.