-Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
- Truly superior pilots are those who use their superior judgment to avoid those situations where they might have to use their superior skills.
- Rule one: No matter what else happens, fly the airplane.
- Flying is hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror.
- Fly it until the last piece stops moving.
- It’s better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here.
- An airplane will probably fly a little bit overgross but it sure won’t fly without fuel.
- Believe your instruments.
- Think ahead of your airplane.
- I’d rather be lucky than good.
- The propeller is just a big fan in the front of the plane to keep the pilot cool. Want proof? Make it stop; then watch the pilot break out into a sweat.
- If we are what we eat, then some pilots should eat more chicken.
- I’d rather be a chicken than a turkey.
- Without fuel, pilots become pedestrians.
- If you’re ever faced with a forced landing at night, turn on the landing lights to see the landing area. If you don’t like what you see, turn 'em back off.
- Standard checklist philosophy requires that pilots read to each other the actions they perform every flight, and recite from memory those they need every three years.
- Experience is the knowledge that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
- There are some flight instructors where the student is important, and there are some instructors where the instructor is important. Pick carefully.
- Speed is life, altitude is life insurance.
- No one has ever collided with the sky.
- Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
- It’s better to be down here wishing you were up there, than to be up there wishing you were down here.
- One peek is worth a thousand instrument cross-checks.
- Experience is a hard teacher. First comes the test, then the lesson.
- Always remember you fly an airplane with your head, not your hands.
- Never let an airplane take you somewhere you brain didn’t get to five minutes earlier.
- If it’s red or dusty don’t touch it.
- Don’t drop the aircraft in order to fly the microphone.
- An airplane flies because of a principle discovered by Bernoulli, not Marconi.
- Cessna pilots are always found in the wreckage with their hand around the microphone.
- If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger, if you pull the stick back they get smaller.
- To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick back harder.
- Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man.... Landing is the first!
- Every one already knows the definition of a 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. But very few know the definition of a 'great landing.' It’s one after which you can use the airplane another time.
- Definition of 'pilot': The first one to arrive at the scene of an aircraft accident.
-The probability of survival is equal to the angle of arrival.
- If you’ve got time to spare, go by air.
(More time yet? Go by jet.)
- IFR: I Follow Roads.
- There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.
- If you don’t gear up your brain before takeoff, you’ll probably gear up your airplane on landing.
- It only takes two things to fly, airspeed and money.
- Forget all that stuff about thrust and drag, lift and gravity, an airplane flies because of money.
- Do you see that propeller? Well, everything behind it revolves around money.
- The difference between a duck and a co-pilot?
The duck can fly.
- I’m from Transport Canada (or the JAA, FAA, DGCA) and I’m here to help.
- It’s better to break ground and head into the wind than to break wind and head into the ground.
- The owner’s guide that comes with a $500 refrigerator makes more sense than the one that comes with a $50 million airliner.
- Flying is not Nintendo. You don’t push a button and start over.
- The six P’s:
Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
- The future in aviation is the next 30 seconds. Long term planning is an hour and a half.
- Life is lead points and habit patterns.
- Gravity: killer of young adults.
- The only thing that scares me about flying is the drive to the airport.
- Young man, was that a landing or were we shot down?
- Sorry folks for the hard landing. It wasn’t the pilot’s fault, and it wasn’t the plane’s fault. It was the asphalt.
- Learn from the mistakes of others. You won’t live long enough to make all of them yourself.
- An accident investigation hearing is conducted by non-flying experts who need six months to itemize all the mistakes made by a crew in the six minutes it has to do anything.
- Things which do you no good in aviation:
Altitude above you.
Runway behind you.
Fuel in the truck.
A navigator.
Half a second ago.
Approach plates in the car.
The airspeed you don’t have.
- It is far better to arrive late in this world than early in the next.
- You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
- The more traffic at an airport, the better it is handled.
- If man were meant to fly, God would have given him baggy, Nomex skin.
- If God meant man to fly, He’d have given us bigger wallets.
- If God had meant for men to fly he would have made their bones hollow and not their heads.
- What’s the difference between God and pilots? God doesn’t think he’s a pilot.
- Flying is not dangerous; crashing is dangerous.
- You can land anywhere once.
- Flying is the perfect vocation for a man who wants to feel like a boy, but not for one who still is.
- There are four ways to fly: the right way, the wrong way, the company way and the captain’s way. Only one counts.
- Trust your captain .... but keep your seatbelt securely fastened.
- An airplane may disappoint a good pilot, but it won’t surprise him.
- Winds aloft reports are of incomparable value - to historians.
- Any pilot who relies on a terminal forecast can be sold the Brooklyn (or London) Bridge. If he relies on winds-aloft reports he can be sold Niagara Falls (or The Tower of London).
- The difference between flight attendants and jet engines is that the engine usually quits whining when it gets to the gate.
- Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.
- Being an airline pilot would be great if you didn’t have to go on all those trips.
- The nicer an airplane looks, the better it flies.
- CAUTION: Aviation may be hazardous to your wealth.
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; if it ain’t fixed, don’t fly it.
- A mechanics favorite: It’s not a leak, its a seep.
- And another: If it won’t budge force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
- The worst day of flying still beats the best day of real work.
- A male pilot is a confused soul who talks about women when he’s flying, and about flying when he’s with a woman.
- There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing: Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
- It’s a good landing if you can still get the doors open.
- First, listen to the question the student asked, then listen to the question he didn’t ask and then figure out the question he really meant to ask.
- Airspeed, altitude, or brains; you always need at least two.
- A groundschool instructor understands piloting the way an astronomer understands the stars.
- Every groundschool class includes one ass who, at 5 minutes before 5, asks a question requiring a 20-minute explanation.
- Gravity, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
- The Law of Gravity is not a general rule.
- You can only tie the record for flying low.
- Flying at night is the same as flying in the day, except you can’t see.
- It is easier to cope with a single in-flight problem than a series of minor ones. Real trouble must be swallowed in small doses.
- It is said that two wrongs do not make a right, but two wrights do make an aeroplane.
- When starting an aviation career it is not unusual to be overwhelmed, terrified, suffer from lack of confidence and be just plain scared. As experience grows, self confidence replaces fear . . . but after a time, when you think you have seen it all, you realize your initial reactions to flying were correct.
- Passengers prefer old captains and young flight attendants.
- A captain with little confidence in his crew usually has little in himself.
- The only soul more pitiful than a captain who cannot make up his mind is the copilot who has to fly with him.
- The sharpest captains are the easiest to work with.
- The only thing worse than a captain who never flew as copilot is a copilot who once was a captain.
- Be nice to your first officer, he may be your captain at your next airline.
- A copilot is a knothead until he spots opposite direction traffic at 12 o’clock, after which he’s a goof-off for not seeing it sooner.
- A captain is two flight engineers sewn together.
- Everything in the company manual - policy, warnings, instructions, the works - can be summed up to read, 'Captain it’s your baby.'
- Nothing is more optimistic than a dispatcher’s estimated time of departure.
- Clocks lie; an 18-hour layover passes much quicker that an 8-hour day.
- Any pilot who does not privately consider himself the best in the game is in the wrong game.
- Definition of a Goonie Bird pilot: A man with an interest in aviation but a basic fear of flying.
- A terminal forecast is a horoscope with numbers.
- A thunderstorm is never as bad on the inside as it appears on the outside. It’s worse.
- I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richtor scale.
- If it ain’t Boeing -- I ain’t going.
- It’s easy to make a small fortune in aviation. You start with a large fortune.
- Pilots are just plane people with a special air about them.
- Keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down.
- Don’t forget to keep the blue side up.
- A fool and his money are soon flying more airplane than he can handle.
- Some pilots will make an emergency out of a bad magneto check. Others, upon losing a wing, will ask for a lower altitude.
- What’s the difference between a first officer and a duck?
The duck can fly.
- Definition of a complex airplane: landing a taildragger on pavement with a 20 knot quartering crosswind.
- When a forecaster talks about yesterday’s weather, he’s an historian; when he talks about tomorrow’s, he’s reading tea leaves.
- The main thing is to take care of the main thing.
- Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding it.
- The last thing every pilot does before leaving the aircraft after making a gear up landing is to put the gear selection lever in the 'down' position.
- Remember, you’re always a student in an airplane.
- Keep looking around; there’s always something you’ve missed.
- Fuel in the tanks is limited. Gravity is forever.
- Try to keep the number of your landings equal to the number of your takeoffs.
- Takeoff’s are optional. Landings are mandatory.