Thank you for your reply David.
I have had a mess around with changing some assistance settings to easy, but can't see that I saw any improvement, which makes me wonder whether these are set up with pre-configured options rather than the settings you make in game.
Having come from playing car racing simulators, I don't think that jealousy should be factored into what essentially is a game in the first instance and there will always be someone better! In the case of flight simulation, whether that be someone pro at flying or pro at figuring out the physics of the game, there is obviously some factor that allows them to be better.
In my opinion, top 10 replays would be invaluable in seeing where you could improve, and even if assists were a factor, you would still be looking at the best way to implement the landing.