Best Airline Quotes & Sayings

Software is inherently complicated. If you say to somebody I want an airline reservation system, to really say what you want in terms of overbooking and fares, and different airlines communicating with each or schedule changes, it's immensely complex. And so you can't write a program that's any simpler than that full specification. — Bill Gates

I knew I'd chosen the wrong airline when I noticed the sick bag had the Lord's Prayer on it. — Les Dawson

I had arrived at the airport one hour early so that, in accordance with airline procedures, I could stand around. — Dave Barry

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage. — Mark Russell

Mr. Gunt, Mr. Neal here is a street survivor. We at the airline are honoring the homeless this year, and it was our airline's privilege and delight to offer him the one remaining business-class seat as a token of our faith in the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. With the full authority of the EU air-system code behind me, I order you back to 67E. — Douglas Coupland

Flying United, to me, is like crossing the Andes in a prison bus. There is no question in my mind that somebody like Pat Nixon personally approves every United stewardess. Nowhere in the Western world is there anything to equal the collection of self-righteous shrews who staff the "friendly skies of United." I do everything possible to avoid that airline, often at considerable cost and personal inconvenience. — Hunter S. Thompson

Some of the best fiction writers got their start writing airline menus. — Erma Bombeck

In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school. — W. Richard Stevens

I'm involved in everything from highly progressive lighting systems to airline interiors. In the field of transportation I can go from the micro to the macro: architecture, transportation, industrial product design, right across the board. It's Russian dollism, because they all interrelate: one goes into the other. — Ross Lovegrove

But seat-back video screens and the hard frames that surround them pose a safety challenge, partly because of the potential for injuries caused by head strikes, and partly because the computers and the electrical systems that serve them have to be both fireproof and fully isolated from the plane's - so that crossed wires in somebody's seat don't allow a ten-year-old playing a video game to suddenly take control of the cockpit. Largely as a result, in-flight entertainment systems are almost unbelievably expensive. The rule of thumb, I was told, is "a thousand dollars an inch" - meaning that the small screen in the back of each economy seat can cost an airline ten thousand dollars, plus a few thousand for its handheld controller. — Anonymous

Curiously, a principle affects your life whether you are aware of it or not. For instance, the principle of gravity was working long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head. But once it did, and he understood it, then we as a society were free to harness this principle to create, among other things, airline flight. — Andy Andrews

How much better it would be if they weren't so damn understanding
if they kicked me out of the house. To find yourself out in the street with two dollars to your name, to catch the streetcar downtown and get a job, perhaps as an airline stewardess. Think how wonderful it would be to fly to Houston and back three times a week for the next twenty years. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. It would be wonderful. — Walker Percy

I'm recognized in public about 80 percent of the time across this country, but during the other 20 percent when I'm not, I get pissed when I realize how shabbily other people must be treated every day. When store clerks or airline reps do suddenly recognize me and get nice after being grumpy when they didn't know who I was, I get testy right back. — John Waters

We've got fuel prices coming down and good travel numbers coming out, so it's not surprising airline stocks are going up. — Andrew Sullivan

These days no one can make money on the goddamn airline business. The economics represent sheer hell. — C. R. Smith

We're in the Customer Service business - we just happen to provide airline transportation. — Colleen Barrett

There is something about the airline industry that really grabbed me. — Maurice Flanagan

I made publicity contracts with Nike, several broadcasting companies and airline companies within Australia. — Cathy Freeman

They record thoughts and overheard conversations, as well as maps of their personal paths, phone numbers for hotels, restaurant recommendations, airline flight numbers. Eventually, — Danny Gregory

It's not a testosterone-driven industry any longer. Success is making money, not in the size of the airline. — Gordon Bethune

I've said many times that I'd be thrilled to sell the airline to the employees and our guys said no, we'll take all the money, anyway. — Robert Crandall

The alliance with air Berlin is attractive for me. I can use the whole sales network of the air Berlin and 24 percent of my own airline at air Berlin sold. — Niki Lauda

We have the best customer satisfaction record, based on Transportation Dept. statistics, of any airline in America, the fewest complaints filed per 100,000 passengers carried. So you're not just getting low fares, you're also getting wonderful customer service. — Herb Kelleher

When she finally got to the desk, the airline employee was surprisingly upbeat. "Your best bet is to Apparate."
"Sorry?"
"Just a little Harry Potter humor," he said. — Rainbow Rowell

I see easyHotel as one of the best, most natural extensions of the 'easy' brand from the airline. EasyHotel is raising money to accelerate growth at a much faster rate than I could have grown it as a private company, whilst enabling me to spend more time on my diversified portfolio of other investments. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

When you have armed militants, aided and abetted by a major country like Russia, able to use surface-to-air missiles to bring down a commercial airline, that is a form of terrorism. — Hillary Clinton

And in the process, we have come up with fuels - algae-based fuels, isobutanol-based fuels and other fuels - that we think will power the planes in the future so that, you know, by 2020 I hope that our planes will be powered on fuels that are clean fuels and are not polluting the environment so that we'll have a green airline and an airline that actually has fuels that will be hopefully cheaper than the dirty fuels of the past. So [we're] doing good and also turning a profit at the same time. — Richard Branson

The only thing I don't like is the uneasiness of dealing with the airlines. Everything, except getting from point A to point B, I still find immensely pleasurable. — Verne Lundquist

The airline industry is full of bullshitters, liars and drunks. We excel at all three in Ireland. — Michael O'Leary

Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie. — Wim Wenders

This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. — Dave Barry

It may be annoying, but the rash of hijackings by Connecticut WASP girls surely explains the time-consuming - but still somehow completely useless - examination of my personal effects. We all have to make sacrifices for airline safety. — Ann Coulter

Since 1978 the record pretty well shows that no start-up airline ... has really been successful, so the odds of JetBlue having long-term success are remote. I'm not going to say it can't happen because stranger things have happened, but I personally believe P.T. Barnum was, in that respect, correct. — Gordon Bethune

We used to fuck with our Catholic roommate during Lent, trying to determine exactly how specific God's opinion was about that one. What if you ate something that you didn't know contained meat? What if you were driving east at 11:30pm and unknowingly crossed into a new time zone right before biting into a cheeseburger? During an airline flight, did God go by departure time, arrival time, or local time when determining the Hell- or Heavenbound nature of your meals? "What if you're a butcher," I remember saying, "and you're slicing up a side of beef on Friday when a stray bit of flesh becomes airborne and lodges itself in your throat. You begin to choke. You can't cough it up, but you could swallow it and save your life. What then, when your life is at stake?" Ridiculous? Sacrilegious? — Johnny B. Truant

In the '80's my gut feeling was that airlines were crap. I hated spending time on planes. I thought we could create the kind of airline I'd like. So we got a secondhand 747 and gave it a go. — Richard Branson

You can't have a mid-life crisis in the airline industry because every day is a crisis. — Herb Kelleher

If our family was an airline, Mom was the hub and we were the spokes. You rarely went anywhere nonstop; you went via Mom, who directed the traffic flow and determined the priorities: which family member was cleared for takeoff or landing. Even my father was not immune to Mom's scheduling, though he was given more leeway than the rest of us. — Will Schwalbe

I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies
NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science
but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits. — Buzz Aldrin

the Army contracts private carriers to handle the overflow. In the Gulf War, they even had to resort to forcing major airline companies to cough up planes to make ends meet, under a compulsive federal system known as the Civilian Reserve Airfleet Program (my favorite government acronym of all time). — Piers Platt

Anyone wanna buy my Malaysian Airlines frequent flier miles? — Jason Biggs