Aviation Quotes

Quotations on flying 🦅 airplanes ✈️ and being a pilot 👨🏼‍✈️
Lovingly compiled by Dave English. On the web since 1996.

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@ALPAPilots Pilots in their early 60’s are looking forward to this “commitment to opening doors”.

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#safety #NASA #spaceshuttle

“We talk about risk and safety, and I hear a lot of people say, “Safety is number one.” “Safety is the most important thing.“ It’s not entirely true. Safety is really important. And we need to always keep safety in front of us. But in the end, what’s number one is to go.”

~ Wayne Hale

Former NASA Mission Control Flight Director and Manager Space Shuttle Program. Reflecting on STS-114, the Return to Space mission, and the career and character of Eileen Collins, at the end of the fantastic 2024 documentary Spacewoman. It's out now on Apple TV and Amazon.
https://t.co/sNJOMgIlsg

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#flying #Popeleo #notAI #A320

“It is a pleasure and a blessing to meet you. Thank you for everything. It is a great honor.”

Pope Leo XIV, from the jumpseat of an Iberia A320 flying from Madrid to Barcelona, to escorting Spanish Air Force fighter pilots, 9 June 2026. First time a Pope talked from the cockpit? Pictures look like AI, but it really happened.

https://t.co/SZ47BJUaOl

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#airlinepilot #womenfly

“I’d never seen a pilot who looked like me.”

Captain Carole Hopson, United Airlines.

Wonderful story: https://t.co/PICFWUIeXD

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#flying #flyingmag #firstsolo

“Every pilot looks at their first solo flight as a major rite of passage they never forget. It marks the first time a person realizes they're truly responsible for their own life.”

Martha Lunkin
Rites of Passage, Flying magazine, June 2026.

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#flying @flywithaopa

“During my decades of flying, I have observed that virtually everything in an airplane has the potential to fail and at some point, probably will.”

Barry Schiff

Decades is an understatment. He has over 70 years of flying experience. In his monthly AOPA Pilot magazine Proficient Pilot column, What If?, AOPA Pilot, May 2026. The article ended with this pratical advice:

“On the next rainy day, crawl into a cockpit and play What if? Ask yourself what you would do if this control or that switch were to fail. It can be an enlightening exercise in preparedness.”

https://t.co/XVedsZlzJn

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#airpower #USAF #flying

“[It] is not enough to shoot down all birds in flight if you want to wipe out the species. The most effective method would be to destroy the eggs and the nests systematically.”

“[It] is much more important to destroy a railroad station, a bakery, a war plant, or to machine-gun a supply column, moving trains, or any other behind-the-lines objective, than to strafe or bomb a trench.”

General Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, 1921.

https://t.co/ZZJb3FvwLt

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Two new additions, both from Flying magazine's Women and Aviation edition, Aug 1965:

“Aviation is, by and large, a masculine activity, and the women who enters this arena does so at the risk of becoming a second-rate aviator or a less feminine female.”

Milton W. Horowitz
Psychology professor, For Men Only?

“There have always been a good many reasons why women shouldn’t fly and a very few reasons why most of them don’t. The reasons are not related. The “shouldn’t reasons” are largely based on man’s shrewd insight into women’s natural shortcomings—their lack of mechanical aptitude, their emotional and irrational behavior in emergencies and their well known limitation of being able to do only one thing at a time.”

Robert B. Parke
Editor of Flying magazine, start of Editorial: The Femine Case, He went on to say they lean more slowly than men, but often fly by the book and take fewer risks. Oh, and they don’t go drinking and flying as much as male pilots. So there’s that.

@FlyingMagazine #WomenFly @TheNinetyNines

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#flying #flyingbooks

“No words are adequate for this changing state of matter. Like liquids to gases or solids to liquids, from melting to freezing to vaporizing, so we soon go from Sapien to Avian.”

Caroline Paul. Why Fly: Seeking Awe, Healing, and Our True Selves in the Sky, released this week, 2026.

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#safety #flying #FAA

❝ We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ. We want good enough. ❞

Gregory Zerzan, US DOT General Counsel, on the use of AI to quickly draft new transport regulations. Meeting notes quoted in Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence, ProPublica news website, 26 January 2026.

https://t.co/0DRgbOr2vz

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RIP John Noble Wilford. The New York Times reporter gave us some of the most magical words about the Space program. Like,

“Men have landed and walked on the moon. …

It was man’s first landing on another world, the realization of centuries of dreams, the fulfillment of a decade of striving, a triumph of modern technology and personal courage, the most dramatic demonstration of what man can do if he applies his mind and resources with single-minded determination. …

The moon, long the symbol of the impossible and the inaccessible, was now within man’s reach, the first port of call in this new age of spacefaring.”

He said later, “I thought to myself, yes, this is the biggest story I will probably ever write in my career. Unless of course, I am still around reporting when people discover other life in the universe.”

https://t.co/7Ez5u091WZ

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“We are on the line 157 337 wl rept msg we wl rept… “

Last received transmission from
Earhart‘s plane. Recorded by Itasca, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter at 8:43 am on Jul 2, 1937.

https://t.co/vJIHo36wvU

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#UPS2976 #NTSB

❝ There are a lot of different parts of this airplane in a lot of different places. ❞

Todd Inman

Member, National Transportation Safety Board, public briefing the day after the fatal UPS 2976 crash of a MD-11 taking off from the Louisville, KY, airport. AP reports, 5 November 2025.

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@TabloidNewsKZN It’s a great line — but it ain’t Leonardo!

https://t.co/Iusap9mpDA

#tastedflight #fakequote

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@Thinkwert It’s a great line — but it ain’t Leonardo!

https://t.co/Iusap9mpDA

#tastedflight #fakequote

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@QuoteofdeDay It’s a great line — but it ain’t Leonardo!

https://t.co/Iusap9mpDA

#tastedflight #fakequote

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@CosmicAnik It’s a great line — but it ain’t Leonardo!

https://t.co/Iusap9mpDA

#tastedflight #fakequote