Quotes About Aviation

I am an obsessive flyer, myself.

The idea of flying in general does not appeal to me. I can barely understand why people want to fly at all, other than that it's occasionally necessary.

A swan can be as fatal to the pilot as a rocket-propelled grenade.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Mark's flying, it was just that, okay, I didn't trust Mark's flying.

a prim and proper lady who sat up front who had been, I was later told, President Eisenhower's personal pilot when she was a male

In 1938, the Army Air Corps had 1,773 planes and trained 500 pilots. In 1942, it built 47,000 new planes and trained 30,000 pilots. By the following year, planes were being churned out at a rate of 8,000 a month.

Walter J. Boyne

There is no tougher job in corporate America than running an airline: Despite the huge amounts of equity capital that have been injected into it, the industry, in aggregate, has posted a net loss since its birth after Kitty Hawk. Airline managers need brains, guts, and experience—and

For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners.

Here I am flying high over enemy lines in my Sopwith Camel searching for the Red Baron. Who's that behind me? It's the Red Baron! He has me in his sights! Give my regards to Broadway.

Here's an image that sticks: imagine a loaded Boeing 747 crashing every three days, killing everyone aboard. That's how many people die on U.S. highways every year.

Unfortunately, the technological fixes have frequently only enabled those who run the commercial airlines, the general aviation community, and the military to run greater risks in search of increased performance.

Edwards continues by arguing that all this automation has not reduced the workload of the pilot a great deal; instead, it has increased the operational effectiveness of the system.

No one but an aviator has a right to look down on others.

I have the ordinary experience of being anonymous when I'm in an airplane talking to air-traffic control, and they don't know who they're talking to. I have a lot of common experiences.

But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.

Wilbur and Orville were rapacious misanthropes who were all too happy to stop progress in its tracks by stifling brilliant innovators, particularly Curtiss, all to stuff their pockets with more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes.

On December 17, 1903, on a windy North Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it.

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.

Sweetie, nothing that flies looks safe, including birds.

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.

I may be developing aerophobia as I get older, or maybe I'm just becoming middle aged, because I find flying an increasingly unpleasant way of travelling. I would much rather drive than fly.

It is absolutely absurd that someone who is deemed unsafe to get on an airplane is allowed to buy a gun in America. It's truly absurd.

We were all flying around up and down the coast near Dunkirk looking for enemy aircraft which seemed also to be milling around with no particular cohesion.