Learn to fly definitely. After hours with flight simulator a friend once took me up for a ride, the radio went out (not a big emergency) but I was able to do mu

Learn to fly definitely. After hours with flight simulator a friend once took me up for a ride, the radio went out (not a big emergency) but I was able to do much of the flying while he dealt with the problem. Understanding the fundamentals made it much easier to step right in. As to being a better pilot, there was an A10 Warthog simulator for the Mac long ago. I was a passenger in a small private jet that did the U-turn-while-losing-lots-of-altitude thing and could see out the cockpit window. But I had already seen it and done it in the A10 simulator. Just my experience.