I think it's just an "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" situation. In an actual emergency some people react well and go back to their t

I think it's just an "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" situation. In an actual emergency some people react well and go back to their training, others panic & freeze up. And it's hard to predict, you do tons of emergency situations during all the flight training they would have gone through in sims and actual planes, but in the back of your mind you still know it's coming and not a real emergency when the instructor pulls the power out to simulate an engine failure or tapes up a piece of paper to block the airspeed indicator.