Lets hear some aviation quotes

SixPapaCharlie

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Better to be down here... ...than the runway behind you
We all hear these pilot quotes but once an awhile, I hear a new one.

I read one today that I actually like even though it is sort of depressing.


As a pilot one of two things are guaranteed:
a. One day you will walk out to the airplane knowing that it is your last flight.

b. One day you will walk out to the airplane not knowing that it is your last flight.
Whatcha got?
 
"Find an instructor that will teach you how to fly an airplane, not how to operate one. Look out the window, feel the airplane, feel what’s going on, and fly it. I see too many people that are taught to operate an airplane like a hunk of machinery. They’re not making the airplane an extension of themselves, and they’re going to get in situations they’re not going to be able to fly out of."
Rob Holland
 
The preceeding post is amusing in light of the most sage advice I was ever given about flying.

From Sgt Fleming to Cpl Privett in 1958: "Do not assign emotional qualities to the aeroplane. It is a hunk of machinery, nothing more. It cares not for you and it does only what the laws of physics demand of it. If the situation warrants, discard it and move on to another."
 
My favorite is the one that says it is better to be down here wishing you were up there rather than up there wishing you were down here.
 
There is no such thing as an emergency take-off
 
He who hoots with the owls at night ... will not soar with the eagles at dawn!
(unknown, Soaring Magazine)
 
"Watch this!"

(Two most feared words in aviation)
 
The preceeding post is amusing in light of the most sage advice I was ever given about flying.

From Sgt Fleming to Cpl Privett in 1958: "Do not assign emotional qualities to the aeroplane. It is a hunk of machinery, nothing more. It cares not for you and it does only what the laws of physics demand of it. If the situation warrants, discard it and move on to another."


Very similar to one I heard someone say, "Never fall in love with anything with a spark plug."
 
"I'm not a stunt pilot, I'm a precision pilot"
- Paul Mantz, and he was. Unfortunately he was killed by a structural failure while flying a cobbled up movie prop.
 
"What the **** is it doing now?"
 
The pilot who thinks they won't have an accident is probably the pilot who will have the next accident.

"There's a force in the universe that makes things happen; all you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking...let things happen...and be...the airplane."
Famous pilot Ty Webb
 
"In aviation, the unnecessary and the convenient are invitations to an accident"
Matt Michael
 
Nothing more useless than the sky above you,the runway behind you and the fuel you didn't take.
 
Don't use it in the Tobago (and hope to never us it), but all the time flying R/C

"When flying Inverted, remember - down is Up, and Up is EXPENSIVE"
 
I think I can roll this airplane.
I believe it is possible to roll this airplane.
 
This is an old classic:

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

~ Leonardo da Vinci
 
"Where the F-- are my parts!"
Rolf Dickens, World Famous Aircraft Mechanic
 
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Aviation has a perfect record, we have never left anyone in the sky.
 
1. A fool and his money are soon flying more airplane than they can handle.

2. Any attempt to stretch fuel is guaranteed to increase the headwind.

3. A thunderstorm is never as bad on the inside as it appears on the outside. Its worse.

4. Never let an ailane take you somewhere that your brain didn't take you there 5mins earlier.

5. An airplane may disappoint a good pilot, but it won't surprise her.
 
'A landing in a tailwheel plane is complete when the rollout is done, the plane is taxied to the tiedown, the engine is off, the plane is put away, and the pilot is relaxing in the lounger with a beer in hand.'
 
"Noboby gets to know everything about flying. Nobody!"

Group Captian J. Saville RAF Training Command
 
I ask people who don't fly, "How can you not fly when you live in a time in history when you can fly?"

— William Langewische, 2001

Pilots track their lives by the number of hours in the air, as if any other kind of time isn't worth noting.

— Michael Parfit
 
My first flight instructor and close family friend (RIP) once told me before soloing his balloon when I was 16, "Son, you don't want to eat your last hotdog". I think it meant doing a hotdog maneuver of some sort and it being your last, but I never got a chance to ask. He died when a wind gust snapped the tether line on his balloon, sending the metal clip into his neck. He had colon cancer, better this way, quick and easy. I remember a lot of his one liners, but his hotdog one always makes me chuckle and keep from hotdogging things.

Maybe some old timers here have heard this before, but I have not heard it since.
 
Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.

When someone dies piloting an airplane it's common to say they died doing what they loved, but chances are they weren't loving it the moment just before they died.
 
Do you smell smoke, followed shortly by Awe Shi-
 
"There are only two types of aircraft: fighters and targets."
 
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