Flight Pilot Quotes & Sayings

In 1994, to motivate me to complete my pilot's license, my good friend, Gregg Maryniak, gave me Charles Lindbergh's autobiography of his solo flight across the Atlantic. — Peter Diamandis

Son of a bitch!" "What is it?" asked Coleman. "Our flight's delayed!" "But only fifteen minutes," said Coleman. "I've seen this movie before. 'Fifteen minutes' is code for 'at least three to five hours.' They know the plane's stuck in Pittsburgh, where they wrestled another drunk pilot to the runway, but they don't want an open passenger revolt, so they incrementally string us along fifteen minutes at a time, until you're across the international date line." Serge paced in front of the departure screen. Fifteen minutes later, Serge grabbed Coleman and pointed. "Sweet Jesus! They just added another fifteen minutes! — Tim Dorsey

I'm a long-flight pilot. Pushing a little bubble of air-filled metal across an ocean of nothing is what I was born to do. — James S.A. Corey

Whenever you get on the plane, the flight attendant will always tell you the name of your pilot. Like anyone goes, Oh, he's good. — David Spade

We lived in and out of our flight bags, they being our true and only home. Thus, if we were not actually flying or sleeping, we were often lonely and at a loss to occupy ourselves. — Ernest K. Gann

If you have flown, perhaps you can understand the love a pilot develops for flight. It is much the same emotion a man feels for a woman, or a wife for her husband. — Louise Thaden

Not long after I got my test pilot qualification, I realised there was no manned space flight programme in the U.K., and there was unlikely to be one. — David Mackay

We tend to think that refusing to exalt Christ is staying true to our self-will and personal freedom when really we are condemning ourselves. Sure, we can pretend to stay true to ourselves, but if you want to talk about reality, all of that is completely trivial if this life is an island and He's the only pilot with a plane and a flight plan. — Criss Jami

Owen Zupp is an award-winning writer, published author and commercial pilot with nearly 17,000 hours of flight time. He has flown all manner of machines from antique biplanes to globe-trotting Boeings and shared the journey with readers around the world in a variety of publications. — Owen Zupp

Who else had ever met the business-end of a bolt of lightning in mid-flight, as he had just now, flying blind through a storm, lost a wing, managed to come down still alive even if it is on a wooded mountainside, to cut the contact at the moment of crashing so that he wasn't roasted alive, and crawl out with just a wrenched shoulder and a lot of cuts and bruises? He couldn't bail out because he was flying too low, hoping for a break through the clouds through which to spot something flat enough to come down on; he doesn't like bailing out anyway, hates to throw away a good plane. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

But despite the maturity of the basic F4U design, the risks involved in flight-testing design changes remained. On 8 July 1946 test pilot Dick Burroughs was killed while attempting to land at the Tweed New Haven Airport following an engine failure in the XF4U-5. Later that year, project pilot Bill Horan survived a risky bail out of an F4U-5 following an engine failure during a high altitude dive test over Long Island Sound. — Ralph Harvey

Yes, I am a pilot. I am a flight instructor and a commercial pilot. — Treat Williams

The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon. That was the time that we had achieved the national goal of putting Americans on the moon. The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight. Walking on the lunar surface was very interesting, but it was something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable. So the feeling of elation accompanied the landing rather than the walking. — Neil Armstrong

I used to train with my husband, Anthony Maina, but he is now too busy as a helicopter pilot, so we only run together when I do light jogging. I don't want to kill him before his next flight! — Catherine Ndereba

Any young boy can nowadays explain human flight - mechanistically: " ... and to climb you shove the throttle all the way forward and pull back just a little on the stick ... " One might as well explain music by saying that the further over to the right you hit the piano the higher it will sound. The makings of a flight are not in the levers, wheels, and pedals but in the nervous system of the pilot: physical sensations, bits of textbook, deep-rooted instincts, burnt-child memories of trouble aloft, hangar talk. — Wolfgang Langewiesche

Any problems with your flight? (Acheron) I didn't eat my pilot if that's what you mean. And little Nicky here is still breathing and not bleeding. (Zarek) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And let's get one thing straight. There's a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. One is a technician; the other is an artist in love with flight. — Elrey Borge Jeppesen

Pilots say that learning to fly makes you feel taller. In my father's case that was certainly true. By the time his commanding officer pinned on his gold flight wings at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in June 1943, he had grown two inches since his enlistment, topping out at six feet, two inches. He was not quite nineteen years old, making him the youngest pilot in the United States Navy. — George W. Bush

I belong to a group of men who fly alone. There is only one seat in the cockpit of a fighter airplane. There is no space alotted for another pilot to tune the radios in the weather or make the calls to air traffic control centers or to help with the emergency procedures or to call off the airspeed down final approach. There is no one else to break the solitude of a long cross-country flight. There is no one else to make decisions. — Richard Bach

Should be a pleasant flight, Mr. and soon-to-be Mrs. Ryel," the pilot said. Jared's grin stretched the width of his face. "I might have paid him extra to say that." "I figured as much," I teased. — Jamie McGuire

Values are like a pilot's flight plan . . . without them you're flying blind. — Frank Sonnenberg

Commander Lebedev wrote - 'After a communication session we invited Flight Engineer Savitskaya to the heavily laden table. We gave Sveta a blue floral print apron and told her, " 'Look, Sveta, even though you are a pilot and cosmonaut, you are still a woman first. Would you please do us the honor of being our hostess tonight?' "
"Ouch," says Roth — Dan Simmons

We piled aboard the small chopper and after a bit of map pointing to the pilot we lifted off.
"I love the RAF," said Jed.
"I love them too, sir," said I.
After a short flight the chopper landed. We all got out and waved our thanks and farewells to the crew and Major Jenner checked his map. After a quick examination he announced that we had been dropped in the wrong place.
"I fucking hate the RAF," said Jed.
"I fucking hate them too, sir," said I. — Ken Lukowiak

The difficulty lay with the mind accommodating itself to the notion of the plane, with all its weight, defying gravity, staying aloft. She understood the aerodynamics of flight, could comprehend the laws of physics that made flight possible, but her heart, at the moment, would have none of it. Her heart knew the plane could fall out of the sky. — Anita Shreve

EVERY PILOT REMEMBERS his first flight. For me, it was in a Cessna 172 at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1968. — George W. Bush

Freighter pilot Hal Spacejock has a life to die for: His very own cargo ship, a witty and intelligent flight computer ... and a debt so big it makes the GFC look like a rounding error. Hal's an upright sort of guy, and he won't take jobs from gun runners, drug smugglers or politicians. On the other hand, the finance company's brutal enforcer is on his doorstep, and Hal has barely twenty-four hours to pay him off. Miss the deadline and he - and his ship - will go under. Way, way, under. — Simon Haynes

Am I responsible or are you', a senior official asked his pilot, dubiously beginning a flight to Baghdad, 'for seeing that this machine is not overloaded?' 'That will have to be decided at the inquest. — LeBron James

When a test pilot comes off a flight, there is typically another pilot who is going to take it up, and he believes in the debriefing. You don't keep something to yourself. — Wally Schirra

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It's amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then — Stephen R. Covey

No, on the outside view there was nothing for anyone to notice about me. I remained one pillar of a trinity, another pillar was lying only temporarily (temporarily! temporarily! temporarily!) in the hospital, I was the pilot of a three-engine aircraft, one of whose engines had stalled: there is no reason to panic, this is not a crash landing, the pilot has thousands of flight hours behind him, he will land the plane safely on the ground. — Herman Koch

Let's take flight simulation as an example. If you're trying to train a pilot, you can simulate almost the whole course. You don't have to get in an airplane until late in the process. — Roy Romer

The pilot is still the pilot, whether he is at a remote console or on the flight deck. With the potential for thousands of these unmanned aircraft in use years from now, the standards for pilot training need to be set high to ensure that those on the ground and other users of the airspace are not put in jeopardy. — Mark Rosenker

I love flying; I love aircraft, and you could say I've had a love affair with flight since I was a child. I travel a huge amount. I use airports, and as a pilot, I've flown in and out of airports thousands of times, so really, I have a fairly broad perspective. — Norman Foster

As we drank champagne in the lounge, I explained that I had earned special privileges by being particularly vigilant and observant of rules and procedures on previous flights, and by making a substantial number of helpful suggestions regarding check-in procedures, flight scheduling, pilot training, and ways in which security systems might be subverted. I was no longer expected to offer advice, having contributed enough for a lifetime of flying. — Graeme Simsion

On Thursday, a passenger forced his way into the cockpit of a United Airlines flight from Miami, but was subdued after the co-pilot hit him with a small ax. Good to see our airlines are being kept secure by the latest in 12th century technology. — Dennis Miller

The helicopter appeared so reluctant to fly forward that we even considered turning the pilot's seat around and letting it fly backward. — Igor Sikorsky

A general rule of thumb is that when the flight crew is paid for one hour, they are actually on duty for three hours. So if a pilot is paid $25 an hour (that is what Delta's Endeavor pays their first year first officers) an hour you would actually divide that number by three to get the real hourly wage of $8.33 an hour. That is less than what fast food workers are paid and they do not have to spend $200,000 learning how to make hamburgers. — Ben Mandell

I made a date with her for the following week. Mid-week, I went for a ride in a T-28. The engine failed, the pilot slid the plane into the sand of the Mojave out near El Centro, and I slid into a hospital bed for about ten days at North Island Naval Air Station. While I was in the hospital, the CARDIV left for WestPac. I called Marguerite and told her what happened and that I wanted to see her again. I'm not sure she believed me, but agreed to another date. Unfortunately it had to be a short date because I had to head for Norton Air Force base to catch a flight for Hawaii, to meet up with the CARDIV. — W.R. Spicer