Let's start with the foot pedals. There is no gas pedal or single brake pedal like in a car. Instead you have pedals that move the rudder in the air or turn the plane on the ground or stop the plane if you push both pedals at the same time. So, it is important if you want to stop that you are very careful pushing the pedals because unless you are going absolutely straight you could turn the plane over on the ground, especially in a cross wind while you are moving at a landing or takeoff speed.
Then you have the yoke. It is not a steering wheel. It doesn't do the same thing at all as a steering wheel and the yoke looks in some planes like a little steering wheel. In other planes it is just a stick that looks a little like an old fashioned emergency brake on Trucks instead. A stick was the first Yoke or steering wheel on a plane. But, it doesn't steer the plane it allows the plane to gain or lose altitude or allows the plane to bank.
After you take off from the ground at get to the altitude you are going to fly at, the yoke is used to bank mostly. But, banking mostly is for when you get into a landing pattern or to line up with a runway unless you are sightseeing and want to circle an area in a continuous bank for some time to see it better. However, then you have to be careful this continuous bank doesn't make your passengers throw up in your plane.
Then you have the hand throttle. (There is no foot throttle in any plane that I'm aware of). The reason you use a hand throttle is that while flying you usually want a continuous throttle at whatever rpm (revolutions of the engine per minute) that you might want right then.
Then there is the fuel altitude mixture. This gets a lot of pilots (small plane pilots) into trouble when they are flying through mountains at a much higher altitude than they are used to. IF they forget to change the fuel mixture either while flying very high or returning it to normal when they land this can cause the engine to sputter and to quit and if they can't get the fuel mixture right before the crash, they can also die from this problem as well.
So, as a pilot be sure you are competent for whatever flying you are embarking upon. Just because you know everything about flying near the ocean, don't think you also know everything about flying in higher mountains about up and down drafts and how they will affect your specific plane too.
Mountains and up and down drafts that aren't expected by pilot kill a lot of them, even experienced sea level pilots.
This is especially true when licensed pilot is used to flying alone in his plane and suddenly takes a trip with his or her friends and family. Then things can happens where there are mountains or desert up and down drafts or high cross winds when people aren't noticing sideways slip that can be fatal if pilots aren't noticing their changes in relation to the ground sideways or changes in altitude from sudden or continuous up or down drafts.
So, thinking a plane is like a car in the air isn't useful at all. It is not. It is a completely different thing.
Another problem is almost any idiot with a flying manual can take off in a small plane. However, landing the thing is completely different.
Taking off a plane is very very easy if you just have a flying manual.
But landing that same plane unless you have an experienced pilot talking you down on the radio is mostly fatal or injurious. This is an important thing to understand. You might take off in a plane and then put a parachute on and jump out of it and survive after taking off but landing without an experienced pilot aboard who has been trained for all the many variables you have to deal with is almost always injurious or fatal to the pilot (unless an experienced pilot on the radio talks that person down into a landing).
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