GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
Boeing

There are 53 quotes matching Boeing in the collection:

Everything went very well. If anything, it was fairly routine. I think I'll just go home and relax.

John Armstrong

Boeing test pilot, first flight of the 757, FAA registration N757A, on 19 February 1982. Reported in The New York Times newspaper 22 February 1982. A problem with the number 2 engine (right wing) required an air restart during the flight. The prototype landed at Paine Field, Everett, Washington, after 2 hours, 31 minutes. The article added this:

“I’ve been over it so many times that actually I feel a lot more comfortable in my airplane than in my own car. We know basically what it’s going to fly like.”

It wasn’t until the jet engine came into being and that engine was coupled with special airplane designs — such as the swept wing — that airplanes finally achieved a high enough work capability, efficiency and comfort level to allow air transportation to really take off.

Joseph Sutter

Executive Vice President, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, in the 23rd Wings Club General Harris ‘Sight’ Lecture, New York City, 21 May 1986.

If you were born on an airliner in the US in this decade and never got off you would encounter your first fatal accident when you were 2300 years of age and you would still have a 29% chance of being one of the survivors.

Les Lautman

Safety Manager Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, 1989.

The Boeing 747 is the commuter train of the global village.

Henk Tennekes

The Simple Science of Flight, 1996.

We believe the airplane is trying to tell us something and that it has been trying for quite awhile.

Bernard Loeb

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Director of Aviation Safety, Safety Board hearing on the 1994 USAir Boeing 737 rudder crash. Boeing had been advancing a theory of pilot error, but eventually the design fault was found. 23 March 1999, quoted the next day in U.S. panel questions safety of 737s, Chicago Tribune, Section 1, 14 March 1999.

Tawakalt ala Allah.

Gamil El-Batouti

EgyptAir Flight 990 co-pilot, he repeated the phrase — English translation is I rely on God — eleven times while shutting off the Boeing 767’s engines and pushing the jet into a fatal dive over the Atlantic Ocean, source NTSB, 31 October 1999.

What’s happening, Gamil? What’s happening?

What is this? What is this? Did you shut the engines?

Pull. Pull with me. Pull with me. Pull with me.

Captain Ahmed Mahmoud El Habashy

EgyptAir flight 990, last words, on returning to the cockpit, source NTSB, 13:50 EST 31 October 1999. The Boeing 767 was pushed into the Atlantic Ocean by the First Officer.

In airplanes you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla. One year could be vanilla or it could be chocolate. I don’t attach any relevance to which one.

Gordon Bethune

Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, regards buying Boeing or Airbus products, 2000.

See nine other Gordon Bethune great aviation quotes.

We have focused on derivatives for several years, but when it’s time to do a new airplane, it’s time to do a new airplane.

Michael B. Bair

Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president for business strategy and development, announcing the Sonic Cruiser (which was eventually canceled), 29 March, 2001.

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 when they started training him they called the FBI. Reported (with his exact misspellings) by The New York Times, 8 February 2002.

Will someone please explain to me the logic that says we can trust someone with a Boeing 747 in bad weather but not with a Glock 9 millimeter?

U.S. Senator Zell Miller

During debate in the U.S. Senate regards approving guns in cockpits. 20 September 2002.

When I first started out in the aviation field, there were no women currently flying in the military or for commercial airlines. There were no footprints in the snow. My strategy was to eliminate any reasons why someone wouldn’t hire me as a pilot, like inadequate training or experience.

Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann

Test pilot, Boeing Aircraft. An 'Office' With a View, Boeing press release, 22 September 2003.

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. In for example America By Air, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007.

Flying for the airlines is not supposed to be an adventure. From takeoff to landing, the autopilots handle the controls. This is routine. In a Boeing as much as an Airbus. And they make better work of it than any pilot can. you’re not supposed to be the blue-eyed hero here. Your job is to make decisions, to stay awake, and to know which buttons to push and when. Your job is to manage the systems.

Bernard Ziegler

Former Airbus Senior Vice President for Engineering, interview in William Langewiesche’s Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson, 2009.

We learned more about this airplane in the first 10 minutes of flying than we have in the last 100 days.

Michael H. Carriker

Test pilot, first flight of the Boeing 787, Boeing Field, 15 December 2009.

The airplane flew beautifully. There were no surprises.

Randall Neville

Test pilot, first flight of the Boeing 787, Boeing Field. As a highly experienced test pilot and former director of Flight Operations for the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, Neville knew the wonder of ‘no surprises’ on a first flight, 15 December 2009.

There is still a newness about air travel, and, though statistics demonstrate its safety, the psychological effect of having a girl on board is enormous.

A 1935 airline magazine

Commenting on the addition of stewardesses. Quoted by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in an online article Stewardesses, a Radical Idea, by Tim Grove, 15 May 2010.

These are the 'Original 8' female stewardesses hired for Boeing Air Transport, later United Airlines, 1930:

I believe they’re all fucking Toyota Corollas.

Michael O'Leary

Ryanair CEO, regards the technical differences between Airbus, Boeing & Comac airliners. In Fortune magazine article, 18 November 2013.

See nine other Michael O’Leary great aviation quotes.

Some of our freighter companies are asking us for [single pilot airliners]. We are quite confident, technologically, that the toolkit is filled. With respect to commercial airplanes, there is no doubt in our minds that we can solve the problem of autonomous flight.

John Tracy

Chief Technology Officer, Boeing Aircraft. Article in Air Transport World magazine, March 2015.

Are we vulnerable to single AOA sensor failures with the MCAS implementation or is there some checking that occurs?

[Name Redacted]

Boeing aero-stability and control group employee expressing concern about the B-737 MAX MCAS system in internal Boeing email. 17 December 2015. Slide from U.S. House Transportation Committee investigation, October 2019:

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