[calmbonsai]

No. I'm, in essence, saying the opposite. To use your analogy "as someone with 5 hours into driver's ed in my mom's civic I now realize how hard driving actually is and why ALL cars still have 4 wheels, still use a steering wheel, and still have seat-belts".

[stickfigure]

People with a handful of hours towards a private pilot's license have no (zero, zip, nada) expertise or insight when it comes to the design and manufacture of commercial airliners. You might feel like you do, but it has no basis in fact, because the constraints that really matter are things that engineers have spent a hundred years working out by trial and error (and crashing a lot of aircraft).

We wouldn't take airliner design advice today from the Wright brothers, either.

[carabiner]

When I worked in flight test you realize how much pilots don't know anything. It's exactly like a car driver vs. automotive engineer.

[carabiner]

That's not what your original comment says at all. You're pontificating on future aircraft configurations while you're just learning the ABC's of being an enduser of said products. Being a learning pilot confers zero expertise on conceptual design. It probably gives you less expertise than being a longtime aviation journalist like Bill Sweetman.