Quotes & Sayings About Pilots And Flying

There is a thrill of vulnerability at all airshows. There is no way of making everything completely safe. When the machines are being thrashed to capacity and the pilots are flying at their limits to dazzle, things are bound to go wrong sometimes. There have been some historic disasters, but the danger is a part of the attraction. — Alex James

Pilots are drawn to flying because it's a perfect combination of science, romance and adventure. — Charles Lindbergh

If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible. — Bob Hoover

Passed to the pilots flying at NORAD's direction.By 10:45 there was, however, another set of fighters circling Washington that had entirely different rules of engagement.These — Anonymous

I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates. I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes, but I was scared of flying. — Florence Green

In flying, the probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival. — Neil Armstrong

I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience. — Chuck Yeager

Later, after flying in the Navy for four or five years, spending some time on an aircraft carrier, I applied to and was accepted in a program where I went to graduate school first and then to the Naval Test Pilots School. — Mark Kelly

...I stand looking at the aircraft, trying in vain to remember all the theoretical lore which i was supposed to have absorbed in school. The effort is discouraging. — Ernest K. Gann

Not until the space shuttle started flying did NASA concede that some astronauts didn't have to be fast-jet pilots. And at that point, sure enough, women started becoming astronauts. — Henry Spencer

In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was considered extremely dangerous and hazardous, pushing pilots to the limits of mechanical skills and human endurance. Aviation was young. — Mary Garden

I didn't know a lot about Amelia before I started flying. And as a woman and a pilot, I should have known more. — Linda Finch

We were flying on a winged vehicle that would do reentry different than we had ever done before. So all of those were firsts. Test pilots truly love firsts. — Robert Crippen

I feel very confident that Americans flying in the air are safe and that only under the most dire of circumstances would our pilots ever even request permission to do that. — Hugh Shelton

The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don't like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don't care about their passengers' comfort. It's not like they've bought tickets. — Lee Child

Flying is done largely with the imagination. — Wolfgang Langewiesche

Those two pilots that sped 150 miles past their Minneapolis destination have been suspended. They got suspended because they were looking at their laptops instead of flying the plane. Think about this
everybody else on the plane has to turn off their laptops except for the people flying the plane. — Jay Leno

And so, I was not a military test pilot, but as soon as NASA expressed an interest in flying scientists and people who were not military test pilots, that was an epiphany that just came like a stroke of lightning. — Story Musgrave

Even though I'm a family guy, there is something that feels really beautiful about eliminating all children from flying. So, children have to fly on child-only planes. And the pilots have to be children as well. — Jay R. Ferguson

As one veteran Russian pilot dryly told me:We have to be very careful flying in the clouds. Around here they are full of rocks. — Alan Hinkes

Can someone explain to me why pilots feel they need to wake everyone to tell us that we are flying by a cloud that looks like a monkey. — Bill Engvall

There are old pilots and there are bold pilots', goes the saying, 'there are no old bold pilots'. Hal never qualified as old. He'd survived his fuel tank blunder; his next mistake killed him.
In the years that followed, other pilot friends and acquaintances were killed in flying accidents. We were never ready; the news always shocked. Whether we learned from these shocks is doubtful; every pilot is certain that Death will never find him. — R.J. Childerhose

Turbulence: This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You'll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, "Folks, we're encountering a little turbulence." Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean water buffalo organs off the windshield. — Dave Barry

Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying. — Neil Armstrong

While flying with several other USAF pilots over Germany in 1957, we sighted numerous radiant flying discs above us. We couldn't tell how high they were. We couldn't get anywhere near their altitude. — Gordon Cooper

As a physician and as a pilot, I think it lets me be a pretty good translator having one foot in the medical world and one foot in the flying world. Sometimes when the medical guys come in and speak medical stuff to the pilots, the pilots really don't know what they're saying. — David M. Brown

Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description. — Barry Goldwater

I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot. — David Mackay

What is it in fact, this learning to fly? To be precise, it is 'to learn NOT to fly wrong.' To learn to become a pilot is to learn - not to let oneself fly too slowly. Not to let oneself turn without accelerating. Not to cross the controls. Not to do this, and not to do that ... To pilot is negation. — Henri Mignet

I sometimes still go out hunting for bad weather, flying low in simple airplanes to explore the inner reaches of the clouds. Less experienced pilots occasionally join me, not to learn formal lessons about weather flying, but with a more advanced purpose in mind - to accompany me in the slow accumulation of experience through circumstances that never repeat in a place that defies mastery. — William Langewiesche

Pilots are a rare kind of human. They leave the ordinary surface of the word, to purify their soul in the sky, and they come down to earth, only after receiving the communion of the infinite. — Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra

Every flying machine has its own unique characteristics, some good, some not so good. Pilots naturally fly the craft in such a manner as to take advantage of its good characteristics and avoid the areas where it is not so good. — Neil Armstrong

Test pilots have a litmus test for evaluating problems. When something goes wrong, they ask, "Is this thing still flying?" If the answer is yes, then there's no immediate danger, no need to overreact. — Alan Bean

Flying is hypnotic and all pilots are victims to the spell. Their world is like a magic island in which the factors of life and death assume their proper values. Thinking becomes clear because there are no earthly foibles or embellishments to confuse it. — Ernest K. Gann

Why don't we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it. — Calvin Coolidge

There's a lot of Hollywood bullshit about flying. I mean, look at the movies about test pilots or fighter pilots who face imminent death. The controls are jammed or something really important has fallen off the plane, and these guys are talking like magpies; their lives are flashing past their eyes, and they're flailing around in the cockpit. It just doesn't happen. You don't have time to talk. You're too damn busy trying to get out of the problem you're in to talk or ricochet around the cockpit. Or think about what happened the night after your senior prom. — Robin Olds

I was a child of World War Two . I saw films of pilots taking off from aircraft carriers and decided that was the only thing I wanted to do. And it had to be flying from sea carriers. Airfields were not enough. — Eugene Cernan

You bought a one-way ticket to New York with no return flight booked," he says. "I'm flying to New York and I'm not coming back for a month or two," I explain. "I'm not booking a round-trip flight at this point." "I understand. No problem. We'll be finished right after a quick thorough search." I think he's kidding. He's not. I keep trying to joke with him as he frisks me a little too eagerly. "I thought you'd buy me a drink first," I say. "I guess the only people drinking fifteen minutes before a flight are the pilots. — Billy Crystal