Corran Horn was quite an exceptional pilot, IIRC. Soontir Fel was another great. Maarek Stele would be the last from the OT era that spring to mind and haven't already been mentioned.
Tiin and Koon were surprisingly good for PT Jedi, though relatively speaking it's hard to rank them with OT era characters.
Originally posted by AncientPower
Anakin, Luke, Wedge and Poe are probably the top four starfighter pilots.
I'd say Jaina rounds out the top 5.
Jmanghan
Aren't there like epic EU Pilots?
Best EU pilots are Jaina Solo, Soontir Fel, Maarek Stele, Tycho Celchu, Corran Horn, Keyan Farlander (player character of X-wing. The sole surviving Y-wing pilot in A New Hope, protected the B-wing project from destruction, has an impressive number of capship kills), and 'Rookie One' (play character from Rebel Assault games, has plot but no official name. During the Death Star assault, did a separate attack on the superlaser, and also took down the TIE Phantom project).
This is Anakin Skywalker's masterpiece:Many people say he is the best star pilot in the galaxy, but that's merely talk, born of the constant HoloNet references to his unmatched string of kills in starfighter combat. Blowing up vulture droids and tri-fighters is simply a matter of superior reflexes and trust in the Force; he has spent so many hours in the cockpit that he wears a Jedi starfighter like clothes. It's his own body, with thrusters for legs and cannons for fists.
What he is doing right now transcends mere flying the way Jedi combat transcends a schoolyard scuffle.
He sits in a blood-spattered, blaster-chopped chair behind a console he's never seen before, a console with controls designed for alien fingers. The ship he's in is not only bucking like a maddened dewback through brutal coils of clear-air turbulence, it's on fire and breaking up like a comet ripping apart as it crashes into a gas giant. He has only seconds to learn how to maneuver an alien craft that not only has no aft control cells, but has no aft at all.
This is, put simply, impossible. It can't be done.
He's going to do it anyway.
Because he is Anakin Skywalker, and he doesn't believe in impossible.
He extends his hands and for one long, long moment he merely strokes controls, feeling their shape under his fingers, listening to the shivers his soft touch brings to each remaining control surface of the disintegrating ship, allowing their resonances to join inside his head until they resolve into harmony like a Ferroan joy-harp virtuoso checking the tuning of his instrument.
And at the same time, he draws power from the Force. He gathers perception, and luck, and sucks into himself the instinctive, preconscious what-will-happen-in-the-next-ten-seconds intuition that has always been the core of his talent. And then he begins.
On the downbeat, atmospheric drag fins deploy; as he tweaks their angles and cycles them in and out to slow the ship's descent without burning them off altogether, their contrabass roar takes on a punctuated rhythm like a heart that skips an occasional beat. The forward attitude thrusters, damaged in the ship-to-ship battle, now fire in random directions, but he can feel where they're raking him and he strokes them in sequence, making their song the theme of his impromptu concerto.
And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopate sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away.
It is the Force that makes this possible, and more than the Force. Anakin has no interest in serene acceptance of what the Force will bring. Not here. Not now. Not with the lives of Palpatine and Obi-Wan at stake. It's just the opposite: he seizes upon the Force with a stark refusal to fail.
He will land this ship.
He will save his friends.
Between his will and the will of the Force, there is no contest.