Aviation Quotes

“The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
― John Gillespie MaGee Jr.

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.”
― Wilbur Wright

“And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot's own.”
― Richard Bach, A Gift of Wings

“In referance to flying through thunderstorms; "A pilot may earn his full pay for that year in less than two minutes. At the time of incident he would gladly return the entire amount for the privilege of being elsewhere.”
― Ernest K. Gann, Fate Is the Hunter

“The socioeconomic impact of such a minor outburst is due to our technological development (air travel)—a century ago, such an eruption would have passed unnoticed. Technological development makes us more independent from nature. At the same time, at a different level, it makes us more dependent on nature’s whims.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“A fallow mind is a field of discontent.”
― John H. Cunningham, Red Right Return

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.”
― Wilbur Wright

“…it was even more disconcerting to examine your charts before a proposed flight only to find that in many cases the bulk of the terrain over which you had to fly was bluntly marked: ‘UNSURVEYED.’ It was as if the mapmakers had said, ‘We are aware that between this spot and that one, there are several hundred thousands of acres, but until you make a forced landing there, we won’t know whether it is mud, desert, or jungle – and the chances are we won’t know then!”
― Beryl Markham

“Ducks are melodic, not melodramatic. That, plus the gift of aquatic aviation, makes them the ideal soup ingredient.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“In the quiet, I talked to my friend, who happened to be a T-33, and asked point-blank the questions I could never answer.

'What are you, airplane? What is it about you and all your wide family that has made so many men leave all they know and come to you? Why do they waste good human love and concern on you who are nothing but so many pounds of steel and aluminum and gasoline and hydraulic fluid?”
― Richard Bach, A Gift of Wings

“It is virtually impossible to get a refund from a budget airline!”
― Steven Magee

“You are most likely to get bumped from a flight on a budget airline. It may take them days or weeks to reschedule you on a replacement flight, due to their low volume of generally oversold flights on your route.”
― Steven Magee

“It is cheaper for an airline to bump passengers off an oversold airplane than it is to sell the correct number of seats for it.”
― Steven Magee

“I have been a victim of the airline industry ‘Bumped’ passenger that gets reclassified to ‘No-Show’ fraud.”
― Steven Magee

“The pièce de résistance was the aisle and spot where the couple would say their vows. The aisle itself was made of white plexiglass, and above it were draped lush, dimensional bouquets of white flowers with silver and blue accents. At a glance, it looked like fluffy clouds in a blue sky. The planners had managed to rig up other mirrors at angles to reflect the afternoon sky outside of the hangar. It would be like Jacqueline was walking on clouds to meet her groom. My internal wedding planner gave a silent slow clap. Bravo.”
― Mary Hollis Huddleston, Piece of Cake

“God’s truth – the rim of the lowering sun, all they could see of it, had turned green. It was sandwiched in between a bank of low dark haze and a higher bank of dark cloud, and just along the upper edge of the haze was this bright lozenge of flaming green, like Chartreuse liqueur with light behind it. Maddie had never seen anything like it.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“You can do as much leadership development programmes, seminars or workshops, if you don't like people, if you don't love your team, you will not enjoy being leader. Leading is about people and their wellbeing the first foundation to the organisations wellbeing.”
― Janna Cachola

“I blame the toxic stock market for the Boeing 737 Max accidents.”
― Steven Magee

“The root cause of the Boeing 737 Max accidents can be traced back to the failure of the FAA and NTSB to properly regulate Boeing.”
― Steven Magee

“Max 8 crash, Max 8 crash and Max 9 explosive decompression. Which Max is next?”
― Steven Magee

“The Boeing 737 Max is turning into the Ford Pinto of modern commercial aviation.”
― Steven Magee

“The Boeing 737 Max 9 is just the tip of an iceberg of problems the USA airline industry has.”
― Steven Magee

“It was a time of astonishing courage, a time of betrayal and disaster […] when girls and boys thought nothing of stepping into the clear blue sky.”
― Rodman Philbrick, We Own the Sky

“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.”
― John H. Secondari

“Balance business acumen with customer acumen.”
― Janna Cachola

“An airplane's soul, which [the pilot] can never see or touch, is something that her pilot senses: an eagerness to fly; a little bit of performance that according to the charts should not be there, but is; a spirit behind the bullet-holed mass of torn metal with three propellers feathered, touching down on an English airfield. Not the metal, but the soul of an airplane is what her pilot wants to fly, and the reason he paints the name on her cowling. And with that soul, all planes have an immortality that you can feel when you walk onto any airport.”
― Richard Bach, A Gift of Wings

“Which would you choose, airplane, polished linoleum floors and a life secure behind purple-velvet rope, or the insecurities of mud and moonlight, of bent propellers and wingtips for repair?”
― Richard Bach, Biplane

“Aggressive airplane passengers probably have a bad case of Altitude Sickness. Many people are hypoxic at airplane cruising altitude. They would be wise to visit a doctor to see if they have lung or heart damage, hypoxic blood, Sleep Apnea, Altitude Hypersensitivity or something else that is causing oxygen starvation to the brain.”
― Steven Magee

“...which was the real Antoine: the one who would stand mesmerised in front of the window on rainy afternoons watching the drops racing across the glass, or the one who turned the attic upside down and then suddenly appeared disguised as a buccaneer or an explorer shouting ridiculous phrases in order to amuse his sisters and cousins.

He asks himself that very question. Who am I? The court jester who shakes his bells when he’s with others, or the silent introvert I am when I’m on my own?”
― Antonio Iturbe, The Prince of the Skies