Aviation Experience Quotes

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

And I fly planes all the time. And helicopters.

When I was a kid it was big news when someone flew around the world in a little aeroplane, but nobody cared when I did it. Then, to rub salt into my wounds, the customs people ripped my aeroplane to pieces, looking for stuff.

I lay no claim to advancing scientific data other than advancing flying knowledge. I can only say that I do it because I want to.

Every once in a while, we'd ask my dad if we could get a ride in one of these planes. And, he did take us to the flying club and get us a ride in the Pushpak and a glider that the flying club had.

And, I wouldn't consider myself to be a natural pilot; I've had to work at it.

Almost everything else I have done during my adult years has been affected to some extent by my name - by my father's position, if you will. But in the air, I had no name; to the Federal Aviation Agency I was simply Comanche Nine-Nine POP. The quality of my landings, navigation and judgment were mine alone.

When I was a little girl, my father, who was a high-ranking officer, pilot, and an avionics specialist in the United States military, would hoist me up onto the elevator - the flight control surface located at the tail of his airplane. From up there I could get a glimpse of the world as he saw it.

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.

My father had been opposed to my flying from the first and had never flown himself. However, he had agreed to go up with me at the first opportunity, and one afternoon he climbed into the cockpit and we flew over the Redwood Falls together. From that day on I never heard a word against my flying and he never missed a chance to ride in the plane.

With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe.

It was an honor to serve at Boeing on the 777.

So it's, I think it's quite, quite unique to fly with somebody with so much experience.

There's simply no substitute for experience in terms of aviation safety.

I've had a private pilot's license for years and flown all round the U.K. and over to France.

Prepare for the unknown, unexpected and inconceivable . . . after 50 years of flying I'm still learning every time I fly.

Why shouldn't I fly from New York to Paris? I have more than four years of aviation behind me. I've barnstormed over half of the 48 states. I've flown my mail through the worst of nights.

I was lucky enough to fly in Concorde, and you get up to 65,000 feet, and I could see the curvature of the Earth.

I've owned about 18 airplanes over the years, and I've never bought one of them new.

It sucked, but it was way cool at the same time," Gazzy said. "I felt like the Blue Angels!" "Yeah, except the blue Angels are an extremely well funded, well equipped, well trained, well fed, and no doubt squeaky-clean group of crack navy pilots," I said. "And we're a bunch of unfunded, unequipped, semitrained, not nearly well fed enough, and filthy mongrel avian-human hybrids. But other than that, it's exactly the same.

The flying? I'm not worried about it. I'm safe up there. I feel very comfortable with my abilities flying an airplane.