GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
747

I would like to fly in a professional like manners one of the big airliners. I have to made my mind which of the followwing: Boeing 747, 757, 767, 777 and or Airbus A300 (it will depend on the cost and which one is easiest to learn).

The level I would like to achieve is to be able to takeoff and land, to handle communication with ATC, to be able to successfully navigate from A to B (JFK to Heathrow for example).

In a sense to be able to pilot one of these Big Bird, even if I am not a real professional pilot.

Zacarias Moussaoui

The alleged 20th hijacker, in a 2001 letter written to the Pan Am International flight academy. They guessed him to be a rich playboy, but when they started training him they called the FBI. Reported (with his exact misspellings) by The New York Times, 8 February 2002.

The Boeing 747 is so big that it has been said that it does not fly; the earth merely drops out from under it.

Attributed to Ned Wilson

Captain, Pan American World Airways. Quoted in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum exhibition America by Air, 2007.

Ten Thousand Rivets Flying in Formation.

Cliché

Classic description of a large plane. Used for example in the Air Combat magazine article Ten Thousand Rivets Flying in Formation: The Shackletons of the Royal Air Force’s No. 8 Squadron, September 1983, or ”Four million rivets flying in close formation” as the opening line of the 1993 book Wide-Body: The Triumph of the 747.

Every year, more people are killed by injuries caused by donkeys than those caused by aircraft.

Anon

Often repeated as a comic aviation-safety 'fact', but apparently unsupported. Snopes classifies the broader donkey-vs-airplane claim as a legend. First seen in the London Times newspaper in 1987:

“The statistics on the safety of flying are immensely comforting, despite recent reports of a near-miss between a 747 and an RAF Hercules over Carlisle, and the Boeing 747 captain who apparently had to be reminded to lower his craft's undercarriage before landing at Heathrow. One expert has estimated that more people in the world are kicked to death by donkeys than die in plane crashes.”