She was flying with a flight instructor in the role of student. I think that's enough for a lay person to take those words at face value, not knowing what a PPL means. Even if they searched it up, they'd see 40 hours of flight time, and that's similar to the requirement to give a teenager a driver's license, and it may be hard to square that with landing a plane, which is a very intimating task to people who have mostly never flown an aircraft.

I've seen similar stories about incapacitated flight instructors and celebration of student pilots making it out safely, and I think the reporting is similarly "surprised" about a mere "student" getting out unscathed whether male or female.