Flying Laughs

— Gordon Baxter

That's not flying, that's just falling with style.

— Woody, from the 1996 movie 'Toy Story,' regarding Buzz Lightyear.

There is an art . . . to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

— Douglas Adams, 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'. Read the whole passage

Landing on the ship during the daytime is like sex, it's either good or it's great. Landing on the ship at night is like a trip to the dentist, you may get away with no pain, but you just don't feel comfortable.

— LCDR Thomas Quinn, USN.

Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle. It's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.

— Captain Rex Kramer, in the movie 'Airplane.'

We have clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?

— Cockpit crew in the movie 'Airplane.'
Listen to the classic original cockpit conversation

The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.

— Benny Hill

When the weight of the paper equals the weight of the airplane, only then you can go flying.

— attributed to Donald Douglas (Mr. DC-n).

The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

— Jonathon Swift

Which is now a more hopeful statement that Swift intended it to be.

— Will Durant

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.

— Tom Stoppard

The three worst things to hear in the cockpit:
The second officer says, "Oh shit!"
The first officer says, "I have an idea!"
The captain say, "Hey, watch this!"

— anon.

My definition of an optimist has to be the Luftwaffe F-104 pilot who gave up smoking!

— John Wiley

In response to how he checked the weather, "I just whip out my blue card with a hole in it and read what it says: 'When color of card matches color of sky, FLY!'"

— Gordon Baxter

Instrument flying is an unnatural act probably punishable by God.

— Gordon Baxter

Arguing with a pilot is like wrestling with a pig in the mud, after a while you begin to think the pig likes it.

— Seen on a General Dynamics bulletin board

It doesn't do any good to stand on the airplane's brakes when you're already on your back!

— Rex Thorp

Nothing said I had to crash.

— R.A. Bob Hoover, after hitting a telephone wire and losing two feet of wing in his P-51.

Captain Oveur: "Ya ever been in a cockpit before?
Joey: "No sir, I've never been up in a plane before!
Captain Oveur: "Ya ever seen a grown man naked?

— from the 1980 movie 'Airplane.'

Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?

— Captain Oveur, from the 1980 movie 'Airplane.'

Doctor Rumack: "When are we going to be able to land?
Ted Striker: "I can't tell.
Doctor Rumack: "You can tell me, I'm a doctor.
Ted Striker: "I don't know.
Doctor Rumack: "Well, can't you take a guess?
Ted Striker: "Not for another two hours.
Doctor Rumack: "You can't take a guess for another two hours?

— from the 1980 movie 'Airplane.'

Ted: "We're gonna have to come in pretty low on this approach.
Elaine: "Is that difficult?
Ted: "Well sure it's difficult. It's part of every textbook approach. It's just something you have to do ... when you land.

— from the 1982 movie 'Airplane II, The Sequel.'

In the Alaska bush I'd rather have a two hour bladder and three hours of gas than vice versa.

— Kurt Wien

Lady, you want me to answer you if this old airplane is safe to fly? Just how in the world do you think it got to be this old?

— Jim Tavenner

I know, but this guy doing the flying has no airline experience at all. He's a menace to himself and everything else in the air. ... Yes, birds too.

— Air Traffic Controller in the 1980 movie 'Airplane.'

They're beeping and they're flashing. They're flashing and they're beeping! I cant stand it anymore, they're blinking and they're flashing.

— Buck Murdock, in the 1982 movie 'Airplane II, The Sequel.'

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

— Mark Russell

[When asked why he was referred to as 'Ace']: Because during World War Two I was responsible for the destruction of six aircraft, fortunately three were enemy.

— Captain Ray Lancaster, USAAF.

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

— Jack Handey, 'Deep Thoughts from Saturday Night Live.'

You know they invented wheelbarrows to teach FAA inspectors to walk on their hind legs.

— Marty Caidin

The light at the end of the tunnel is another airplanes landing light coming down head-on to the runway you are taking off from.

— Robert Livingston, 'Flying The Aeronca.'

If helicopters are so safe, how come there are no vintage/classic helicopter fly-ins?

— Jim Tavenner

What is that mountain goat doing way up here in the clouds?

— Gary Larson, in a well-known 'Farside' cartoon.

Death is just nature's way of telling you to watch your airspeed.

— Anon.

Buttons . . . check. Dials . . . check. Switches . . . check. Little colored lights . . . check.

— The Bill Waterson comic character Calvin, of 'Cavin and Hobbes.' fame.

Leader, bandits at 2 o’clock!
Roger; it’s only 1:30 now—what’ll I do ‘til then?

— The Bill Waterson comic character Calvin, of 'Cavin and Hobbes.' fame.

It only takes five years to go from rumor to standard operating procedure.

— Dick Markgraf

Real planes use only a single stick to fly. This is why bulldozers & hellicopters -- in that order -- need two.

— Paul Slattery

I've flown every seat on this airplane, can someone tell me why the other two are always occupied by idiots?

When it comes to testing new aircraft or determining maximum performance, pilots like to talk about "pushing the envelope." They're talking about a two dimensional model: the bottom is zero altitude, the ground; the left is zero speed; the top is max altitude; and the right, maximum velocity, of course. So, the pilots are pushing that upper-right-hand corner of the envelope. What everybody tries not to dwell on is that that's where the postage gets canceled, too.

High-performance jet fighter, fully armed with missiles, guns. ECM equipment, fresh paint (stars and bars painted over), single seat, 97% reliability rate, will outclimb, outturn F-16, outrun F-14, low fuel burn (relatively), all digital avionics, radar, terrain following, INS, GPS, Tacan, used only for testing and sales promotion. Now in storage.
Contact Northrop Corp. Will trade for Mig-25 and home address of Air Force Acquisition officer.

— ad found in 'Pacific Flyer' magazine, shortly after the F-20 program was cancelled.

Flying an aeroplane with only a single propeller to keep you in the air. Can you imagine that?

MaCleod, since you've flown the SeaBee a lot you'll understand when I say it was the only airplane I ever owned that you could put in a dive, loose a cylinder and stall out!

I don't like flying because I'm afraid of crashing into a large mountain. I don't think Dramamine is going to help.

This time up in the Himalayas where we had been stranded for days. Each day we would head down to the airfield only to be told the plane could not take off. Finally on a day the weather was slightly better the chief of police informed us as follows:
The allocated pilot for today is the best pilot in Nepal, don't worry, he will take the risk.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet air intakes

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

— every redneck cropduster's last words

This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.

As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result, birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.

Firewall: (1) The part of the airplane specially designed to allow all heat and exhaust to enter the cockpit. (2) The act of pulling 69 inches of manifold pressure, out of an engine designed to pull 60.

If God had meant man to fly, He would never have given us the steam railway locomotive.

— A Great Aviation Quotes reader's late great aunt.

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

If God had really intended men to fly, He'd make it easier to get to the airport.

In the space age, man will be able to go around the world in two hours -- one hour for flying and one hour to get to the airport.

— Flight Journal magazine, April 2000, regards the XF10F-1, Grumman's first attempt at a swing wing fighter.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the very first Fokker airplane built in the world. The Dutch call it the mother Fokker.

Flight Reservation Systems decide whether or not you exist. If your information isn't in their database, then you simply don't get to go anywhere.

United hired gentlemen with the expectation of training them to become pilots, Northwest hired pilots hoping to train them to become gentlemen. To date, despite their best efforts, neither carrier can be considered successful.

Tower: Have a good trip.
Pilot: Make that a round trip . . .

If black boxes survive air crashes -- why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

— George Carlin

A joke told repeatedly at aviation industry conferences puts a man and a dog in an airplane. The dog is there to bite the pilot if the man so much as tries to touch the controls; the pilot's one remaining job is to feed the dog. Many aviation veterans have heard the joke so many times that is possible to tell those in the audience new to the industry by their laughter.