[fingpilot]

Most takeoff aborts are a non-events these days. It is one of the most practised events (in the simulator). Except there, the instructors/examiners have loaded you up to max everything, thrown in some weather, and waited until the exact last second to hit you with the reason for the abort (pre-programmed into a computer).

The second most practised event in the simulator is the exact same scenario, but they wait until just seconds AFTER the commit to fly point, and then hit you with the fire/blown engine scenario.

You get to fly it around the pattern (IFR and VFR) to get back on the runway. Of course at max gross weight, snowing, crosswinds, and sometimes a fuel truck or a FedEx freighter crossing the runway as you get ready to flare (requiring a go-around). Minus that engine that folded tent just before liftoff.

If the instructor had a fight with the wife or had some road rage left in him from his commute to work, he failed the engine with the hydraulic system that boosted the flight controls, or the brakes and steering, letting you physically wrest that 50 tons of plane around the pattern.

If he really doesn't like you (or sees, in my case, that you have never crashed the sim), he'll shut the airport you just left from down, and let you sweat your way to some other airport to land on a shorter runway with an even lousier approach.

The stuff that actually happens in the airplane in real life is usually a non-event.

You've seen a lot worse in the sim. That's the whole point.

Some people take that swagger as pilot bravado.

I consider it the confidence that good training instills.