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There are 21 quotes matching 747 in the collection:
Beautiful. A little turbulance but she soaks it up.
Jack Waddell
Boeing test pilot, radio transmission during the first test flight of the B747, 9 Feburary 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 demonstate the safety of the new airliner. Reported as 747 Goes Aloft for First Time; It’s Beautiful, The Seattle Times, 10 February 1969.
See one other Jack Waddell great aviation quote.
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. 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.
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.
See one other Eric Moody great aviation quote.
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.
See three other Juan Trippe great aviation quotes.
It handled magnificently. It’s a pilot’s dream.
Jack Waddell
Test pilot, press intervew 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.
See one other Jack Waddell great aviation quote.
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.
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.
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.
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
British Airways, PA to the passengers after flying through volcanic ash in a B747, British Airways flight 9, 24 June 1982.
See one other Eric Moody great aviation quote.
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 hystaulic systems. 530 people died. It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history
The Boeing 747 is the commuter train of the global village.
Henk Tennekes
The Simple Science of Flight, 1996.
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.
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.
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.
See seven other Richard Branson great aviation quotes.
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 Captain Ned Wilson
Pan Am. In for example America By Air, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007.
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.
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. 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 seven other Richard Branson great aviation quotes.
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