Stringfellow Hawke is a helicopter ace several times over in the eponymous chopper, including:
4 Cuban MiG-19s in one go.
Two WWII bombers, on separate occasions, the latter being missile armed.
Another version of his own chopper.
An experimental attack chopper, known as "HX-1".
A Soviet Kalmar/"Delta III" class SSBN.
A lot of MD 500 look-a-likes.
Dominic Santini almost certainly got more than five in World War II.
Andromeda has Beka Valentine, who is rightly known as one of the best pilots in three galaxies. One episode has an entire fleet slaved to her flight controls in order to allow them to navigate a dangerous area of warped space with her skills and reflexes allowing most of the ships to make it through.
Andor: Luthen proves himself to be quite deadly in a dogfight, making expert use of his tricked-out Fondor to down several attacking TIE Fighters while escaping an Imperial patrol with no backup.
Howlin' Mad Murdock from The A-Team was most certainly one of these: he flew a small jet, a jumbo jet, a biplane, many small passenger planes, a jetpack, and untold numbers of helicopters over the course of the series. Other characters (especially the colonels and general chasing after the A-Team) acknowledged Murdock's mad skills. Whether he's a Steamroller, a Bushwhacker, or a Plugger depends on the episode. Given his craziness, it makes (relative) sense for him to be all three.
Several of the main characters were portrayed as pilots of some skill. Sinclair, Sheridan, Ivanova, and Garibaldi all had Ace Custom starfuries featuring distinctive Nose Art. Marcus and Lennier both piloted White Stars through numerous battles. Londo Mollari bragged about being such a pilot, and on one occasion got to handily prove it in a shuttle dodging Anti-Air missiles like it was no big deal (he could be extra daring since he already knew how he would die and it wasn't for years). G'Kar led a patrol of Narn fighters to Z'Ha'Dum and was the only one to survive a battle with the Shadows. Even some of the villains qualified, such as Mr. Bester, who had his own elite telepath fighter squadron, the Black Omega Squadron, as his own pet project. Sinclair is openly stated to be one, having flown a starfury in various battles of the Earth-Minbari War and not only survived but killed a discrete number of Minbari fighters.
Executive Meddling forced J. Michael Straczynski to add one of these in the second season. He responded by having the pilot do nothing for almost the entire season and then killing him off at the season's end.
Meanwhile Ivanova got an Offscreen Moment of Awesome in this regard in "Believers", taking on something on the order of two dozen raider ships by herself in defense of a passenger liner. When she got back, she laughed it off to Garibaldi as an uneventful flight. Garibaldi remarked that her fighter would be in the shop for at least a week.
Kara "Starbuck" Thrace was played straight as the best pilot in the Fleet, with the kill count and retina-detaching moves to match (including locking the wings of her viper with Apollo's to bring him home when it lost power — in the middle of a battle!). Also, plenty of pilots will claim to be able to fly anything with wings. But how many of them could climb inside something's dead body and fly its brain?
Starbuck may be the Fleet's Top Gun, but Lee "Apollo" Adama is second only to her, even pulling off a few Starbuck-worthy moves in his own right when an injury puts her out of commission.
There was also an episode dealing with the Cylon ace, Scar, who's a Bushwacker/Sniper using his wingman as a decoy. Scar had one big difference from every other Ace on this page: he couldn't die, at least not permanently. He was resurrected and reloaded into fighter bodies countless times, until he seemingly had too much experience to be beaten at all. Sure, he had countless kills, but he himself was killed a significant number of times — and every time he died, he got angrier and angrier. Starbuck gets him by using his own tactic against him, luring him into position so her wingman Kat can shoot him down, and this time he doesn't come back on account of their having destroyed the Resurrection Ship earlier in the season.
Most of Battlestar Galactica (1978) pilots were these: Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer, Jolly, Greenbean, Cree, Sheeba. If you weren't a Bridge Bunny, you were probably an ace pilot. Justified in that only the very best pilots survived the destruction of the fleet.
Greg "Pappy" Boyington from Black Sheep Squadron, both on the show and in real-life was an ace pilot in World War II, having shot down between two to six Japanese planes while he was with the Flying Tigers and 22 more with the Marine Corps.
In Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Buck is one of these, performing dogfighting with 25th century spaceships, as most pilots in this era rely completely upon their combat computers.
The Tenth Doctor takes over control of piloting the Titanic as well as the Vinvocci's spacecraft, and pilots both through perilous environments (one while it was on a high-speed collision course, and the other through several waves of missiles), despite having no experience in either vehicle before.
"Victory of the Daleks": Danny Boy is one of three pilots that fly Spitfires into space to assault the Dalek ship, and is the only one to survive.
"The Tsuranga Conundrum": General Cicero became a decorated war hero with her piloting skills. And although it's been a while since she's flown anything, she still retains those skills.
In The Expanse, Alex is this for the Rocinante, the legitimately salvaged Martian gunship that the main heroes fly on. Alex is actually a fairly interesting case of playing with this trope: when piloting the Canterbury, a humble cargo transport ship, he seems like a damn good pilot, but he later explains that he was considered not good enough to make the grade in the Martian Navy and says that he was "a glorified bus driver" during his time in the Navy. The implication at the time is that he's something of a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond; amazing by the standards of a civilian transport pilot, but substandard in the eyes of the extremely badass Martian Navy. While he does do some leveling up during the course of the series, including one period where he trains obsessionally to improve his performance, it soon becomes clear that he legitimately qualifies for this trope and the Martian military badly underestimated his skills and potential. This is also why Alex is particularly attached to both the Roci and the crew, as having the chance to actually pilot a Martian gunship after spending twenty years getting passed over in the navy is essentially a case of My Greatest Second Chance for him.
After Alex's death from a brain aneurysm, James Holden shows some competency as a pilot too, although not nearly to Alex's extent. The final battle does have him fly around Ring space while dodging railgun shots, which requires some pretty good skills.
Hoban Washburne of Firefly is a genius pilot who is said to be able to "thread a needle" with a Firefly-class freighter — and the skills he's shown backs it up. Because Serenity is completely unarmed (except for its destructive engine exhaust), Wash is restricted to playing as a plugger, with emphasis on outmaneuvering and evading his opponents instead of defeating them in a straightforward confrontation. It’s in the blood, too, as his daughter Emma shows her own skills in the comics.
Lost: Frank Lapidus who arrives with the freighter crew in Season 4 is acknowledged in universe as being a fantastic pilot. He's introduced piloting a helicopter through a storm where it's struck by lightning. His passengers, who parachuted out, assume he must have crashed but he landed the chopper perfectly. He's later part of two crash landings (neither of which are his fault) with minimal casualties in the second and none in the first. In the series finale he's able to launch his plane despite it literally being held together with duct tape.
Miles: Hey, hey, Lapidus, where's the chopper? Where did it crash? Lapidus: Crash? The hell kind of pilot do you think I am? I put her down safe and sound right over there!
Madam Secretary: We only know Henry McCord's flying record via exposition to his son for a school project because he's retired by the time of the series. In an unusual variant, rather than being a Navy or Air Force air-to-air ace, he flew F-16s on ground attack missions for the Marine Corps in Operation Desert Storm and, in his own words, "I always hit my target."
Subverted in the Tenerife disaster. See Real Life for more details.
A couple of other episodes on Eastern Flight 401 and United Flight 173 also show how having an ace pilot can be a liability instead of an asset. Flight crews are now trained to work together as a team, thanks to these accidents.
Played straight in the case of United Airlines Flight 232, in which the cockpit crew used CRM effectively and even employed the services of an off-duty instructor pilot who happened to be on board that day, and were able to minimize the severity of the crash, leading to a crash that killed 112 people rather than all 296 people on board.
Japan Airlines Flight 123 also played this straight, with the pilots keeping the crippled aircraft in the air for longer than anyone could in the flight simulation. Sadly only four people survived this crash, however this was mostly due to the incompetence of the search and rescue teams and not at all the fault of the pilots.
The Orville has Lieutenant Gordon Malloy, the best pilot in the fleet, who got blacklisted for showing off to a girl, resulting in lots of cargo being lost. He's also famous for drawing penises on lots of places. But he's also manages to pull off a trick known as "hugging the donkey", which allows the Orville to evade a powerful Krill destroyer and then position the ship to receive an out-of-control shuttle, while in the middle of said firefight. In a later episode, his piloting skills are the only thing that allow Captain Mercer's daring plan to work against a Krill battlecruiser. Lieutenant John LaMarr is the ship's navigator but is also a highly-rated pilot himself, second only to Malloy. He gets to show off his skills in one episode (without even spilling his soda). Subverted with Pria Lavesque in "Pria", who appears to be able to fly the ''Orville' out of a dark matter thicket, but later reveals that she was just faking. The actual flying was done by a 29th-century device she has previously attached in engineering.
Lt. Gordon Malloy: This is something I call "hugging the donkey". Lt. John LaMarr: You can "hug the donkey"? Lt. Gordon Malloy: Dude, I've been "hugging the donkey" since flight school.
When doing a test fight against a Moclan ship in "Deflectors", Ed had to ask him to dumb it down — the point of the test was to see how the improved Deflector Shields stand up to fire but the Moclans couldn't get in a single hit until that point.
During the Battle for Earth, Gordon is shown piloting a Krill fighter and casually taking out Kaylon ships several times the fighter's size, while quoting Top Gun. And that's after pulling two seemingly impossible maneuvers in a shuttle: successfully launching off a ship in FTL (normally suicide) and then pumping all of the shuttle's power into a single powerful burst of speed that should have cracked the shuttle like an egg.
In season 3, Gordon test flies a new fighter craft against a team of Attack Drones controlled by Charly Burke, who can think in multiple dimensions. He manages to outfly and blow up all the drones.
Agent Dave Pomeroy, from the TV MoviePanic in the City, is a reserve pilot for the Coast Guard, and can fly a helicopter from a suburban area out to the coast on short notice, a handy skill for disposing of a nuke.
The Alternate Rimmer in Red Dwarf is so much this trope that they even named him Ace. "Smoke me a Kipper...!"
RFDS (2021): The series is about air ambulances in the Australian Outback, and the bush pilots who fly them are some of the best. In episode 4, Mira successfully makes an instruments-only landing with a patient on board in a Deadly Dust Storm in one episode, and in episode 7 she gets them safely on the ground after manually pumping the landing gear into place when it fails to extend. Graham is presumably just as good but doesn't have any major opportunities to strut his stuff.
Space: Above and Beyond: The series revolves around USMC Do Anything Soldiers whose ostensible specialty is as fighter pilots, but the 58th Squadron's commanding officer Colonel T.C. McQueen, the Sole Survivor of the previous top squadron in the Corps, stands head and shoulders above them despite a Career-Ending Injury to his inner ear. After an enemy ace nicknamed Chiggy von Richthofen after the historical Red Baron kills several squadrons' worth of pilots including a 58 Red Shirt, McQueen has the surgical implant keeping his inner ear working removed and personally goes out to blow Chiggy von Richthofen out of space.
Priest: In times of war we must all make peace with our maker. Lt. Col. Tyrus Cassius "TC" McQueen: Well, I don't think our maker wants to hear from me right now. Because he knows I'm going to go out in this plane and I'm going to remove one of His creations from His universe. And when I get back, I'm going to drink a bottle of scotch as if it was Chiggy Von Richtofen's blood and celebrate his death. Priest: Amen.
Stargate Atlantis has John Sheppard as the quintessential Ace Pilot who can fly anything and isn't afraid of proving it. He is seen flying a helicopter, Puddlejumpers, F-302s and a Dart. And a hollow asteroid. And, once or twice, a city.
Jack O'Neill from Stargate SG-1 isn't so bad himself. Even though he transferred from fighters to special ops a long time ago, he hasn't lost his touch and gets to demonstrate it a couple times, most notably in the opening episode of Season 7 in which he needs to make a hyperspace microjump to place himself inside an enemy superweapon's shields, level out before crashing into the superweapon, and then take out the small thermal exhaust port, while dodging enemy fighters on the way in and out. He labels it "the wackiest plan we've ever come up with," then proceeds to execute it perfectly. Later on, he's the one giving a lecture to a roomful of F-302 pilots on the intricacies of flying the spacecraft.
Commander Riker was stated (and briefly shown) to be the best pilot on board. (Mainly because he's the only pilot on board, or at least the only one capable of flying the Enterprise on manual. Riker's much-maligned joystick in Star Trek: Insurrection is actually a faster, more precise, and simpler way to control the ship than typing commands into the computer, or however the helmsman normally controls the ship).
Captain Picard is actually an extremely good pilot as well, although it's shown more subtly. He's been known to take the helm himself in situations where extremely precise maneuvering is needed to get the ship out of danger ("Booby Trap", "In Theory"), talked an inexperienced pilot through a difficult maneuver in order to avoid a crash ("Coming of Age"), and most notably developed the Picard Maneuver ("The Battle") which exploits the fact that a ship traveling at FTL velocities is invisible.
Star Trek: Voyager has Tom Paris, who had been flying since he was five years old. In his own words:
Paris: Captain, asking me to give you a bumpy ride is like asking a virtuoso to sing off-key.
Helmsmen Travis Mayweather is said to be an expert pilot having grown up on ships, although in the series, he does not get to use this talent on-screen much.
Captain Archer is also shown to be a highly skilled pilot, having been one of the test pilots for the early NX Program prototypes ("First Flight").
Star Trek: Discovery gives us Lieutenant Kayla Detmer, who's had a pilot license since she was 12. In a Season 2 episode, she ends up doing a "donut" in a starship in order to get a dark matter asteroid to drag an asteroid stream away from a planet. Michael Burnham herself is shown to be pretty good in the previous episode, when she navigates a dangerous Asteroid Thicket in a tiny one-person pod.
Also Christopher Pike, who was a test pilot before he was captain.
Cristóbal Rios demonstrates his topnotch starship piloting skills during his David Versus Goliath battle with Kar Kantar.
Before they meet, Rios praises Seven of Nine as a magnificent pilot to his Emergency Tactical Hologram while she helps him fight off Kar Kantar.
Narek gives Rios a run for his money in the piloting department when their ships engage in a Space Battle around Coppelius. Narek could very well have obliterated La Sirena if Seven of Nine hadn't arrived with the Artifact, but their vessels are incapacitated by the Orchids before a winner can be determined.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has Erica Ortegas, whose flying skills are demonstrated multiple times in the early episodes alone, often by flying dangerously close to some dangerous astronomical phenomenon while dodging enemy fire. In "Among the Lotus Eaters", Ortegas loses her memories and doesn't know what to do while the ship is in an Asteroid Thicket and is being hit with small rocks. The computer reveals to her who she is and that she's the pilot. Her Survival Mantra becomes, "I'm Erica Ortegas. I fly the ship." She then proceeds to fly on instinct and procedural memory alone, managing to not only safely navigate between giant asteroids but also punches a hole in one with phasers and flies through it. And at the end of the episode (after already getting her memories back), she grabs an asteroid that's been lifted up by two shuttles with a tractor beam, then spins the ship around to hurl the rock away like she's a baseball pitcher.
Jake Cutter from Tales of the Gold Monkey is one of the Plugger variety (considering his plane is an unarmed Grumman Goose flying boat, he's rather obligated to be). He is also a literal Ace, having five confirmed victories flying against the Japanese when he was with the Flying Tigers.
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much-maligned joystick in Star Trek: Insurrection is actually a faster, more precise, and simpler way to control the ship than typing commands into the computer, or however the helmsman normally controls the ship).