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Leader, bandits at 2 o'clock! Roger; it's only 1:30 now-what'll I do 'til then?
Sep 18, 2025
When you think about flying, it's nuts really. Here you are at about 40,000 feet, screaming along at 700 miles an hour and you're sitting there drinking Diet Pepsi and eating peanuts. It just doesn't make any sense.
Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
Flying without feathers is not easy: my wings have no feathers.
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I?
Never fly anything that doesn't have the paint worn off the rudder Pedals.
Why fly? Simple. I'm not happy unless there's some room between me and the ground.
Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something.
Airshow flying is tough, it's even tougher if you do something stupid. Don't do nuthin dumb!
Nobody who has not been up in the sky on a glorious morning can possibly imagine the way a pilot feels in free heaven.
My first wife didn't like to fly, either.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
Flying is done largely with the imagination.
Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see .
Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.
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.
Cloud-flying requires practice, even if you have every modern instrument, and unless you keep calm and collected you will get into trouble after you have been inside a really thick one for a few minutes. In the very early days of aviation, 1912 to be correct, I emerged from a cloud upside down, much to my discomfort, as I didn't know how to get right way up again. I found out somehow, or I wouldn't be writing this.
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.
I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport, although that end is what we have all ostensibly been striving to attain.
No one can realize how substantial the air is, until he feels its supporting power beneath him. It inspires confidence at once.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
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.
I was a pilot and flying hang gliders, paragliders, aerobatics airplanes, and then I discovered skydiving. Free fall. Free. With nothing around you, just a parachute on your back. And you go down. But you don't feel like you're going down. Total freedom.
The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.
I don't have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing.
The way I see it, you can either work for a living or you can fly airplanes. Me, I'd rather fly.
There are two kinds of airplanes - those you fly and those that fly you . . . You must have a distinct understanding at the very start as to who is the boss.
You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky.
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
The Constitution: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.
If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.
Gravity. It's not just a good idea; it's the law!
If you don't like what you see, stop looking.
In flying, the probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.
In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children.
Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror.
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
The engine is the heart of an aeroplane, but the pilot is its soul.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
I think there is something exhilarating in flying amongst clouds, and always get a feeling of wanting to pit my aeroplane against them, charge at them, climb over them to show them you have them beat, circle round them, and generally play with them; but clouds can on occasion hold their own against the aviator, and many a pilot has found himself emerging from a cloud not on a level keel.
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.
I don't think I possess any skill that anyone else doesn't have. I've just had perhaps more of an opportunity, more of an exposure, and been fortunate to survive a lot of situations that many other weren't so lucky to make it. It's not how close can you get to the ground, but how precise can you fly the airplane. If you feel so careless with you life that you want to be the world's lowest flying aviator you might do it for a while. But there are a great many former friends of mine who are no longer with us simply because they cut their margins to close.
A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere.
A fool and his money are soon partying.
A fool and his money are soon married.
A fool and his money are soon elected.