This is good feedback that hopefully the devs will take onboard. I know they were hiring mission designers recently. Hopefully they'll improve the training, because you're missing out on a lot of you didn't really get past the tutorials.

Unfortunately they missed quite a few important things in the missions (another commenter mentioned not being told to retract flaps after takeoff).

I do wonder if part of the interesting aspect of this being a sim is that you can actually go online and watch or read a real flying lesson. Perhaps that's the direction they're trying to go in? So far, the community has been doing really well in fixing up scenery, perhaps Asobo are hoping for others to fill the gap with mods.

Re needing to pay, I'm sure there would be excellent free content on learning it (in fact there already is online), but with value added structured lessons as a potential mini product.

With sims, and particularly when you're new to sims, I recommend turning on assists and just going for it. IRL we have rigorous flight training because planes are expensive and there's no reset button, but in sims there's nothing wrong with just taking something up and crashing a few dozen times while you figure things out.

Many of us who are playing today also got our start with very simple and forgiving sims. When I got into them, there was no mixture, no prop pitch, no spins, no torque, and no p-factor (which was good, because I didn't bother binding rudder controls). It's a lot easier if you enable that stuff a few at a time, once you get the hang of the basics.

Honestly, it is a simulator and not a game.

You do not need to buy extra content, controllers, etc to "play the game". But you can spend a lot of money to make it as realistic as you want.