At the end of season 1 of Heroes, disaster is narrowly avoided when Peter Petrelli, who cannot control his acquired power of radioactivity and is about to go nuclear and kill most of the population of New York City, is lifted up bodily by his brother Nathan and flown off into the sky to explode there.
Now, we know that Peter absorbs other people’s abilities, and that flying was the first one he absorbed, from Nathan.
So why was Nathan needed at all here? Peter could fly as well. Why didn’t he just fly off into the thermosphere by himself and explode to his heart’s content without killing his brother in the process?