Truisms for pilots
No matter what else happens, fly the
airplane.
Forget all that stuff about thrust
and drag, lift and gravity; an aeroplane flies because of money !!!
It's better to be down here wishing
you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here.
If you're ever faced with a forced
landing at night, turn on the landing lights to see the landing area. If you
don't like what you see, turn'em back off.
A check ride ought to be like a
skirt, short enough to be interesting but still be long enough to cover
everything.
Speed is life, altitude is life
insurance. No one has ever collided with the sky.
Always remember you fly an airplane
with your head, not your hands.
Never let an airplane take you
somewhere your brain didn't get to five minutes earlier.
Don't drop the aircraft in order to
fly the microphone. An airplane flies because of a principle discovered by
Bernoulli, not Marconi.
"Unskilled" pilots are
always found in the wreckage with their hand around the microphone.
If you push the stick forward, the
houses get bigger; if you pull the stick back, they get smaller. (Unless you
keep pulling the stick back-then they get bigger again.)
Hovering is for pilots who love to
fly but have no place to go.
The only time you have too much fuel
is when you're on fire.
Flying is the second greatest thrill
known to man. Landing is the first!
Everyone already knows the definition
of a 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. But very few know the
definition of a 'great' landing. It's
one after which you can use the airplane another time.
The probability of survival is equal
to the angle of arrival.
IFR: I Follow Roads.
You know you've landed with the
wheels up when it takes full power to taxi.
Those who hoot with the owls by
night, should not fly with the eagles by day.
A helicopter is a collection of
rotating parts going round and round and reciprocating parts going up and down
- all of them trying to become random in motion.
Helicopters can't really fly -
they're just so ugly that the earth immediately repels them.
Pilots believe in clean living. They
never drink whiskey from a dirty glass.
Things which do you no good in
aviation:
Altitude above you.
Runways behind you.
Fuel in the truck.
Half a second ago.
Approach plates in the car.
The airspeed you don't have.
If God meant man to fly, He'd have
given him more money.
What's the difference between God and
fighter pilots? God doesn't think he's a fighter pilot.
Flying is not dangerous; crashing is
dangerous.
A good simulator check ride is like
successful surgery on a corpse.
Asking what a pilot thinks about the
FAA is like asking a tree what it thinks about dogs.
Trust your captain but keep your seat
belt securely fastened.
An airplane may disappoint a good
pilot, but it won't surprise him.
Any pilot who relies on a terminal
forecast can be sold the Brooklyn Bridge. If he relies on winds-aloft reports
he can be sold Niagara Falls.
The friendliest flight attendants are
those on the trip home.
Good judgment comes from experience
and experience comes from bad judgment.
Being an airline pilot would be great
if you didn't have to go on all those trips.
Aviation is not so much a profession
as it is a disease.
The nicer an airplane looks, the
better it flies.
There are three simple rules for
making a smooth landing. Unfortunately,
no one knows what they are.
It's a good landing if you can still
get the doors open.
Passengers prefer old captains and
young flight attendants.
The only thing worse than a captain
who never flew as copilot is a copilot who once was a captain.
It's best to keep the pointed end
going forward as much as possible.
If an earthquake suddenly opened a
fissure in a runway that caused an accident, the FAA would find a way to blame
it on pilot error.
Any attempt to stretch fuel is
guaranteed to increase headwind.
A thunderstorm is never as bad on the
inside as it appears on the outside.
It's worse.
It's easy to make a small fortune in
aviation. You start with a large fortune.
A male pilot is a confused soul who
talks about women when he's flying, and about flying when he's with a woman.
A fool and his money are soon flying
more airplane than he can handle.
The last thing every pilot does
before leaving the aircraft after making a gear up landing is to put the gear
selection lever in the 'down' position.
Try to keep the number of your
landings equal to the number of your takeoffs.
Takeoff's are optional. Landings are
mandatory.
You cannot propel yourself forward by
patting yourself on the back.
The difference between a fighter
pilot & a pig? A pig doesn't sit at a bar until 0300 waiting to pick up a
fighter pilot.
Finally all are written in one
place. Oh, except for the one over the urinal. "Pilots with short
sticks, taxi up close"