i love this question so so so much and i have been thinking about this all day so here are my thoughts
i went on a spiral about whether choosing a mech pilot as my best choice would be cheating, which then led into a tangential spiral about the logistics of mechs and mech cockpits and whether they may have any similarities with real-life airplanes, and then somewhere within that stream of consciousness i concluded that i don't know enough about mechs in any sense to even follow this train of thought to completion. if you know things about mechs and want to tell me......please do? i'm aware i'm the anomalous fatt fan who doesn't do mechs but i would like to learn
anyway i think what i've come to is that if i'm allowed to select a mech pilot as an honorary best choice, and my choice is ver'million blue. i think she is capable, she is skilled, she is highly trained, and she has the edge of desperation that means she's extremely qualified to act in a crisis. now, i would not want to put millie into this situation, as she deserves nothing but rest and happiness, but i think she's the ideal combination of self-preserving and grimly determined to handle the situation, no problem. plus she would look sick as shit. obviously. (leap is the first officer in this situation.....power team)
my non-cheating answer for who i want in the cockpit of this plane - someone who has never (to my knowledge) set foot in an aircraft of any sort and has no relevant flight knowledge - might be pickman. she knows about vehicles. she understands the immense power of transportation. she sees trains as beasts to be overcome and bested, and she respects and fears their power. this is promising for someone attempting an emergency landing in a malfunctioning plane, as i don't believe she would ever step foot on a mode of transit without appropriate understanding of how it works and how she may face a situation in which the plane turns on her and threatens her safety. perhaps i give her too much credit in adapting to an unfamiliar situation like flying an airplane, but i fully believe in her ability to make the most efficient and safest emergency landing possible, evacuate the plane, and immediately turn on its engines and fire her espignol directly into the fanblades, thus killing and neutralizing the beast. airlines hate her!
moving on......worst choice is equally difficult. gut reaction: grand magnificent, because even though he's fully capable of handling this, i feel like he might be the type of pilot to irrationally come to an incorrect conclusion and take exactly the wrong steps to attempt a correction, and in doing so make the situation worse. something like shutting down the functional equipment instead of whatever is malfunctioning. his crew resource management would be horrific. who let this man fly
also a possibility: lem king. he should never be given this power. there is no scenario in which he would act competently or capably when facing a crisis of this level. i'm trying to picture lem as a captain now and i can't even visualize it; i just keep going back to the image of lem in the jump seat playing forlorn violin while victoria solomon and gloria lake, occupying the captain's and first officer's seats, exchange quick comments and fly the plane to safety, all the while tuning out their pathetic colleague. actually, more options for best choice: victoria solomon and gloria lake. at any rate i think we can all agree that lem king should not fly an airplane
i'm going to cut myself off here so i don't write several more volumes in this vein, but please please please do share your thoughts about fatt characters who should or should not fly planes with me. i love thinking about this now. this is my ultimate niche