GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
747

It handled magnificently. It’s a pilot’s dream.

Jack Waddell

Test pilot, press interview following the first flight of the Boeing 747, 9 February 1969. Reported for example in ‘Jumbo Jet’ Flies First Time; Flaw in Flap Noted, The New York Times, 10 February 1969.



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Beautiful. A little turbulence but she soaks it up.

Jack Waddell

Boeing test pilot, radio transmission during the first test flight of the B747, 9 February 1969, six years to the day of the first flight of the B727. The test pilots deliberately wore business suits rather than flight suits to visually demonstrate the safety of the new airliner. Reported as 747 Goes Aloft for First Time; It’s Beautiful, The Seattle Times, 10 February 1969.



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

Henk Tennekes

The Simple Science of Flight, 1996.

I was always brought up to expect the aeroplane might break any minute.

Eric Moody

British Airways 747 captain, reflecting on his famous 1982 event, losing all four engines, at night, over mountains. Interview in a 2022 Flight Safety Australia article.



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The plane has a very light, responsive touch. I'd call it a two-finger airplane.

Waddell Wallick

Boeing 747 test pilot, describing the first flight to the press, 9 February 1969. Asked which two fingers, he “obligingly held up his left hand with forefinger and thumb curled as if gripping the control wheel”, Boeing magazine, March 1969.

A great weapon for peace, competing with intercontinental missiles for mankind’s destiny.

Juan Trippe

Pan Am’s founder, on the B747, at the ceremonial 747 contract-signing banquet in Seattle on Boeing’s 50th Anniversary. April 1966. Quoted in the 2014 book The Airbus A380: A History and others.



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Autonomy is going to come to all of the airplanes eventually. The future of autonomy is real.

Dave Calhoun

Boeing CEO, at an event commemorating the final delivery of a B747, Everett, Washington. 31 January 2023. Reported by Bloomburg.

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It’s congenital really. We’re an aspiring species that doesn’t have wings. What else would we dream of?

Mark Vanhoenacker

British Airways B747 pilot and aviation author, on dreams of flight. Story in Financial Times newspaper, 17 April 2015.

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.



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Clearly this was an out of the ordinary landing, but I was just doing my job and any one of our pilots would have taken the same actions.

Captain David Williams

Virgin Atlantic flight 43. He safely landed his B747 at London Gatwick with 447 people on board with no starboard outer main landing gear. BBC News, 31 December 2014.

In the ’80’s my gut feeling was that airlines were crap. I hated spending time on planes. I thought we could create the kind of airline I’d like. So we got a secondhand 747 and gave it a go.

Richard Branson

Founder of Virgin Atlantic. Interview in Men’s Journal magazine, May 2006.

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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.”.



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With about three thousand square feet of floor space, 15 lavatories, three kitchens and an occupancy of up to 376 guests, this is surely a true building. I suppose it’s the grandeur, the scale. It’s heroic. It’s also pure sculpture. I mean, it doesn’t really need to fly: it could sit on the ground – it could be in a museum. I suspect it’s one of those icons of the late 20th century that in generations hence will still be looked at in wonder.

Sir Norman Foster

in the 1991 BBC TV show Building Sights (S03E01, first aired 15 January) the architect picked the Boeing 747 for best 20th Century building. Line spoken as he walked around a Qantas 747 on the parking apron at Heathrow. He designed, among many other buildings, the Gherkin in London, the Great Court of the British Museum, and the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California.

Pilot Jack Waddell eased throttles forward; Co-Pilot Brian Wygle called out speeds as a gentle giant of the air began to move; Flight Engineer Jess Wallick kept eyes glues to the gauges. The Boeing Model 747 Superjet gathered speed. The nose lifted. After 4,300 feet—less than half the 9,000 foot runway—main gear of the plane left the concrete. At 11:34 a.m., with a speed of 164 miles an hour, quietly and almost serenely, the age of spacious jets began.

Boeing Magazine

First Flight, March 1969.

We are all pirates at heart. There is not one of us who hasn't had a little larceny in his soul. And which one of us wouldn't soar if God had thought there was merit in the idea? So, when we see one of those great widespread pirates soaring across the grain of sea winds we thrill, and we long, and, if we are honest, we curse that we must be men every day. Why not one day a bird! There's an idea, now, one day out of seven a pirate in the sky. What puny power a man can attain by comparison. Compare a 747 with a bird and blush!

Roger Caras

Birds and Flight, 1971.

Nose up … Nose up … Power

Captain Masami Takahama (高浜 雅己)

Japan Air Lines Flight 123, last words as the doomed B747 crashed into Mount Takamagahara, 12 August 1985. Mechanical failure caused catastrophic failure of the tail and loss of all hydraulic systems. 530 people died. It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history

I wanted to soar through the air.

Nishizawa Yūji

Statement to police after hijacking All Nippon Airways flight 61 on 23 July 1999. He forced the first officer out of the cockpit and stabbed Captain Nagashima Naoyuki to death with an 8-inch kitchen knife in order to fly the B747 himself. Quoted in Newsweek newsmagazine 1 August 1999. The hijacker was a flight simulator fan who wanted to fly a real plane. But this was a clear warning to aviation security officials about the dangers of cockpit door procedures.

Did he not clear the runway … that Pan American?

Flight Engineer William Schreuder

KLM Flight 4805, 27 March 1977, just prior to the worst aviation crash ever, the collision of two B747’s on the ground in the Canary Islands.

Nobody is going to drown. The plane is pressurized.

Capt Don Gallagher

Pilot of Stevens Flight 23, a Boeing 747 that crashed and sunk under the Atlantic Ocean, 1977.

To be clear, this is all in the movie Airport '77. Captain Don was played by Jack Lemmon, screenplay by Michael Scheff and David Spector, based on the 1970 movie Airport, itself based on the novel by Arthur Hailey. It was the third movie in the Airport franchise, and actually received two Acadamy Award nominations. The premise is of course Bravo Sierra, but the plane used in filming was real, an ex American Airlines B747-123, N9667.

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.