Do you regret?

[Wasteland Watcher]

Like @wilkinscw, I also believe a bush pilot is very highly likely to have viewed maps of the areas he's planning on flying over and probably areas off track as well "just in case." 
I don't think he's memorized them though.

When I first started The Long Dark at Mystery Lake I played completely mapless for the first 100 days. After that I had a good feel for how to get around, I'd found a vault in the snow, and I couldn't find any more "new location discovered" popups. After a week (real time) of gaming daily, actively looking for new locations unsuccessfully I took a look at one of the spoiler-free maps showing nothing other than topography. I did the same for Coastal Highway after 47 days (after I got the "Exploration Game" achievement I took a look at a spoiler-free map).
The very last map I viewed was this one from the Hinterland Story Mode Progress update and it was while I was still living in Coastal Highway. A few days ago I moved on to explore "Pleasant" Valley.

Though having viewed a user created topographic map of Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway after having completely explored them, I still feel a bit like I cheated (there's no map in my inventory).
In my recent TWM run I did not look at any maps and from now on I won't  

I'm just going to enjoy the experience as Hinterland Studios meant: 
If our Sandbox, Hopeless Rescue, or Hunted character bailed out of the plane with a map it would be in our inventory  
 

Maps that show spawns of any type are definitely a cheat but having said that, you can play your game any way you like.