Rey exhibits extraordinary piloting abilities in early Star Wars: The Force Awakens scenes, but these skills aren’t that unreasonable considering the flying prowess of other inexperienced pilots in the Star Wars canon. Flight has always been an exciting feature of the franchise, manifesting both in space and within planetary atmospheres. The ships and vehicles that the Star Wars sequels' characters use to get airborne range from small Landspeeders to hulking Star Destroyers, and to pilot each one requires a certain amount of skill and knowledge.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens sees Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and BB-8 dust off the pile of “garbage” that is the Millennium Falcon in an attempt to escape the First Order on Jakku. With Rey in the cockpit, Finn in one of the gunner seats, and BB-8 trying to keep from rolling away, the Falcon springs to life as TIE Fighters chase it down. Surprisingly, Rey precisely flies the Falcon through old scraps on the planet's surface, with her actions appearing nothing short of miraculous considering her lack of piloting experience.
Yet this isn’t the first time such incredible flying has been executed by a Star Wars character despite very limited piloting experience. Both a young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and Luke (Mark Hamill) have previously found themselves in the cockpit of a vessel they had never sat in before going on to accomplish great feats - highlighting a precedent in the Star Wars universe regarding naturally skilled pilots. The Force Awakens novelization by Alan Dean Foster further explains Rey's impressive initial flight, stating that Rey had actually spent some time in an old flight simulator, as well as some time at Niima Outpost perusing the cockpits of various ships prior to flying the Millennium Falcon.
In Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Anakin is shown to possess deft Podracing skills and knowledge of ships due to his time working in Watto’s shop. While flying a Podracer and flying a Naboo Starfighter are two very different things, with minimal help from R2-D2 as his co-pilot, Anakin had no problem utilizing his prior knowledge to destroy the Trade Federation’s Droid Control Ship. As displayed by his remark to Padme (Natalie Portman) earlier in The Phantom Menace, “I’m a pilot… and one day, I’m going to fly away from this place,” Anakin was always confident in his abilities; he just needed an opportunity to present itself.
Outside of the chosen one, Luke is another example of unexpected flying skills coming to the fore during a time of need. In Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Luke quickly convinces Wedge Antilles (Denis Lawson) that his experience flying a Skyhopper has prepared him to fly an X-Wing into the bowels of the Death Star. Though Luke does have help from Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) and the Force, another factor at play here is that Incom Corporation, a starship manufacturer, created both the T-16 Skyhopper and the T-65B X-Wing Starfighter. This means that many of the controls were likely the same between the two machines due to being manufactured by the same company, resulting in Luke's innate skill taking over as he destroys the Death Star.
In Foster’s novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it is revealed that Rey had spent quite some time in a flight simulator she had found on Jakku. The budding Jedi is revealed to have worked through all different kinds of scenarios and found there was nothing that could quite challenge her enough within the simulation. Furthermore, Rey had been in the Millennium Falcon before her first flight of the ship in The Force Awakens - with these two pieces of information crucially explaining why Rey pilots the Falcon with such ease. In this way, Rey's pilot skills within Star Wars: The Force Awakens are not so different from Anakin and Luke’s respective journeys, and, just like these Jedi before her, Rey just needed an opportunity to show what she was really capable of.
