GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
BOEING

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.

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:

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.

The 737 Max just felt right in flight, giving us complete confidence that this airplane will meet our customers’ expectations.

Ed Wilson

Boeing Chief Pilot
After flying the first test flight of the Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing Field, 29 January 2016.

I’ve just had a bad experience and I’m thinking of starting an airline called Virgin. Do you have any secondhand 747s for sale?

Richard Branson

Phone call to Boeing, early 1980’s. Branson repeats this as Virgin Atlantic’s origin story, although the reality, with British Atlantic Airways starting up to fly between London and the Falkland Islands, is more complicated. Quoted in CNBC TV story 29 Dec 2019.



See eight other Richard Branson great aviation quotes.

We’re going to make the best impression on the traveling public, and we’re going to make a pile of extra dough just from being first.

C. R. Smith

American Airlines, on the introduction of the Boeing 707, in Forbes magazine, 1956.

See three other C. R. Smith great aviation quotes.

There are issues around the safety culture in Boeing. Their priorities have been focused on production and not on safety and quality.

Michael Whitaker

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator, during interview with Lester Holt, NBC News, 19 March 2024.

Asked if Boeing was too big to fail, he said “Economics isn’t part of my portfolio, but I would say they’re too big to not make a good airplane. They have all the resources they need. There’s no reason they can’t make a good airplane, and that’s our focus right now.” The FAA had already capped Boeing production volume.

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:

It’s like a shitty pickup. It’s reliable and dependable and it may not be the most exotic thing, but boy, it’s what you want to be in if the weather gets rough.

Gordon Bethune

Former Boeing executive and pilot, who later ran Continental Airlines, talking about the 737. Interview with Peter Robinson, author of Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, 2021.



See nine other Gordon Bethune great aviation quotes.

I would like to apologize, on behalf of all of our Boeing associates spread throughout the world, past and present, for your losses. And I apologize for the grief that we have caused.

Dave Calhoun

Boeing CEO, standing up, turning around to face the families who lost relatives in the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the company’s Max 8 planes, at the start of a public U.S. Senete hearing into Boeing, 18 June 2024.

He said on record that, “I accept that MCAS and Boeing are responsible for those crashes”.



The New York Times reported: “The family members who attended the hearing said they were unimpressed and unmoved by Mr. Calhoun’s apology and his stated commitment to safety and transparency. One of them told reporters that Mr. Calhoun avoided making eye contact and quickly left after the hearing concluded.”

See one other Dave Calhoun great aviation quote.

Ladies and gentleman, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.

Captain Eric Moody

PA to passengers, British Airways Flight 009, Boeing 747 City of Edinburgh, after flying through volcanic ash near Java, 24 June 1982. Wording varies slightly in later accounts, but this is the quote by Betty Tootell in her 1985 book All Four Engines Have Failed: The True and Triumphant Story of Flight BA 009 and the Jakarta Incident. She describes it as “a masterpiece of dramatic understatment”. When next he spoke to the cabin, it was with better news:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Captain speaking. We seem to have overcome that problem and have managed to start all the engines. We are diverting to Jakarta and expect to land in about fifteen minutes.”.



See one other Eric Moody great aviation quote.

The SST is ‘inevitable’—the next logical step in the development of air transport; the progress of aviation is tied to speed, and so is U.S. leadership. The technical challenge is good for us, they say.

Wallace Cloud

Can We Build a 2,000-m.p.h. Airliner?, Popular Science, April 1964. “Top men in U.S. aviation are sweating to make a decision on how guys like you and me, as fare-paying passengers, will fly like test pilots of the 2000-m.p.h. A-11 interceptor.” The cover showed designs from Boeing, Lockhead and North American. The story inside did mention the British/French Concorde.

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.

I would absolutely not fly a MAX airplane. I’ve worked in the factory where they were built, and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door. I tried to get them to shut down before the first crash.

Edward Pierson

Former Boeing senior manager 737 production, Los Angeles Times newspaper, 30 January 2024. His contemporary concerns are detailed in the 2021 book Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing:

“Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off. For the first time in my life, I'm sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.”

Ed Pierson, senior manager 737 production, letter to Scott Campbell, general manager of the 737 factory, 2018. Internal communication made public at House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, 11 December 2019.

When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm. It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.

Harry Stonecipher

Boeing CEO, in an interview with Patricia Callahan, So why does think he can turn around Boeing?, Chicago Tribune newspaper, 29 Feburary 2004. It’s an insightful piece about Stonecipher, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and safety culture.

You have an aircraft, passengers and crew. You have responsibility for them. You can't take your problems from the ground into the skies. You can completely disengage and concentrate on something else. That, for me, is the most relaxing part of flying.

Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands

King of the Netherlands, and for many years a ‘secret’ part-time pilot for KLM flying the Fokker 70, Boeing 737, and A321. Royal Dutch Airlines indeed. Interview in De Telegraaf newspaper, 17 May 2017. English translation by AP. Original Dutch for not taking problems upstairs with you:

„Problemen neem je niet mee naar boven.”

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.

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.

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.

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.