The airplane example is the canonical example but also ironic because it’s an example where there was a ton to learn from survivors. Their first takeaway was logically inconsistent but eventually they realized that places without bullet holes were the most important to armor. Because planes shot in other places survived. If no planes survived they’d learn nothing but instead they learned something useful from the survivors.
It doesn’t change that a WW2 fighter pilot would need some luck to survive but if he took the right lessons from survivors and armored his plane in the correct places he’d improve his probability of surviving.
One of my favorite pieces of business advice is since 90% of businesses fail, start 10 businesses and you’ll probably succeed. Of course that oversimplifies things but so does the original statistic . It’s also useful advice that helps you re-frame “luck” as stochastic risk that you can manage. And learning ways to lower probability of failure is a great way to manage risk even if there’s always some element of randomness at play.