“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.”
Why Fly: Seeking Awe, Healing, and Our True Selves in the Sky, by Caroline Paul, released this week, 2026.
#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 by ProPublica. www.propublica.org/article/trum...
RIP John Noble Wilford. The New York Times reporter gave us some of the most magical words about the Space program:
“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.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/s...
“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.
www.cbsnews.com/news/amelia-...
UPS 2976 crash
❝ 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.
Looking back on 6000 hours, and, “humbly forward, thinking how much more there is to learn.”
avbrief.com/six-thousand
“When you die and Saint Peter says to you, ‘Hey, when were you happiest down there?’ You're gonna say: Well, it was okay the day I got married, and I didn't much mind the day I first fell in love. But seeing the sky with the Great Waldo Pepper, that beats 'em all.” RIP Robert Redford, here playing the Great Waldo Pepper. Screenplay by George Roy Hill and William Goldman. Quote is just three minutes into the 1975 movie, as a crowd gathers after his landing. Asked by a nervious potential passenger, “what if I don't like it?” Waldo says well then, the second ride is free.
“When you die and Saint Peter says to you, ‘Hey, when were you happiest down there?’ You're gonna say: Well, it was okay the day I got married, and I didn't much mind the day I first fell in love. But seeing the sky with the Great Waldo Pepper, that beats 'em all.”
RIP Robert Redford
#jet #predictions #aeronautics
“The turbine is the most efficient prime mover known it is possible that it will be developed for aircraft, especially if some means of driving by petrol could be devised.”
Frank Whittle, Future Developments in Aircraft Design, 1928.
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/...
Great article showing how often fakey fake lines are passed off as quotations from famous people.
Rest assured gentle reader that I’m working to verify and correctly cite all the aviation quotes!
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/f...
“When I meet God, I’m going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he’ll have an answer for the first.”
Attributed to Werner Heisenberg, but never with any proof.
#aerodynamics #relativity #fluiddynamics #heisenberg
RIP Felix Baumgartner:
“I wish the whole world could see what I see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are.”
After jumping from 128,100 feet and going supersonic during freefall. Quoted in The New York Times, 14 October 2012.
xcmag.com/news/felix-b...
#safety #safetyposter #flying #seaplane
“Warning! Consider the possible consequences if you are careless in your work.”
L. N. Britton
1917 US safety poster. Retrieved from the Library of Congress www.loc.gov/item/2002708884/.
RIP #FredSmith:
“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.”
Attributed to a Yale University management professor, in response to Smith’s 1969 student paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Fred later started #FedEx.
“The cockpit is the deepest, most protective, most private sort of home.”
RIP William Langewiesche.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/b...
#flying #langewiesche #cockpit
NC-4 US Navy flying boat
#OTD 106 years ago:
“We are safely on the other side of the pond. The job is finished.”
Lieutenant Commander Albert 'Putty' Read
Radio transmission after first transatlantic air crossing, Lisbon, 27 May 1919, in NC-4 flying boat.
#flying #USN #flynavy
C R Smith letter to FAA about age 60. #FAA #age65 #retirement
“It may be necessary for the regulatory agency to fix some suitable age for retirement.”
C. R. Smith
Chairman of American Airlines, letter to his friend Elwood Quesada, the FAA's first administrator, regards the pilot's union being against American forcing older pilots to retire. 5 February 1959.
There are some questions for sure. But consider an answer they do have — a "sky pub”
✈️ 🍺🍺🍺
“It’s a great line—powerful and evocative—but it wasn’t by da Vinci. It was made up by a TV guy in 1965!”
airfactsjournal.com/2020/08/the-...
aviationquotations.com
“It’s a great line—powerful and evocative—but it wasn’t by da Vinci. It was made up by a TV guy in 1965!”
airfactsjournal.com/2020/08/the-...
aviationquotations.com
#OTD 29 years ago:
“Yes, the airline is safe. I would fly on it. It meets our standards”
David Hinson, Federal Aviation Administrator
“I have flown ValuJet, ValuJet is a safe airline, as is our entire aviation system”
Federico Peña, Secretary of Transportation
12 May 1996, day after ValuJet 592
#OTD 40 years ago:
“There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.”
Orson Welles
Interview to celebrate his 70th birthday, The Times of London, 6 May 1985.
#flying #airline #orsonwelles
Boeing test pilot text message “Piss poor design"
B737 MAX in flight
#OTD 8 years ago:
“This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”
Boeing company pilot, name redacted, in internal message to a colleague regards the B737 MAX, 26 April 2017. Part of the document dump sent to the US Congress investigation, October 2019.
#Boeing #B737
Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by Bill Watterson, first published this day 24 April 1988.
#OTD 37 years ago:
“Enemy fighters at two o'clock!
Roger. What should I do until then?”
Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by Bill Watterson. First published 24 April 1988.
#F4 #fighterpilot #CalvinAndHobbes
#OTD, 12 years ago:
“It is a huge thrill. You’re up there on your own, and you really feel like this is life. I’m the king of the castle up here. That's really what it's like.”
Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown
Record holding Royal Navy test pilot. BBC interview 23 April 2013.
#flying #testpilot
Concorde 002 first flight
#OTD 56 years ago:
“It was wizard — a cool, calm, and collected operation.”
Brian Trubshaw
Concorde test pilot, on the ground after first flight of a British-built concorde, prototype 002. RAF Fairford, 9 April 1969.
#concorde #firstflight #Flying #testpilot
AA MD-11 in flight
#OTD 19 years ago:
“Bankruptcy as a solution in kind of un-American.”
Tom Horton
Chief Financial Officer American Airlines, reported in USA Today newspaper, 6 April 2006. They entered bankruptcy on 29 November 2011.
#AmericanAirlines #airline #Bankruptcy
Book cover “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
#OTD 173 years ago:
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
Henry David Thoreau
Journal, 3 April 1852. It sits as its own thought, its own paragraph, between talking about the weather and describing his walk.
#bluebird #Thoreau #sky
Sir Adam Thomson Founder and chairman of British Caledonian Airways, the largest independent UK airline until it was taken over by its arch-rival, British Airways, in 1988. Quoted in The State of Britian’s Airways, The Illustrated London News, 1 April 1983. Painting is from 1986, Hangar 3 at Gatwick, by John Wonnacott, now in the National Galleries Scotland. #airline #BritishAirways #recession
#OTD 42 years ago:
“A recession is when you have to tighten your belt. A depression is when you have no belt to tighten. When you’ve lost your trousers — you’re in the airline business!”
Sir Adam Thomson
Founder & chairman of British Caledonian Airways, The Illustrated London News, 1 April 1983.
🤓
