Aviation Truisms
(email)

"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never
encountered automatic weapons."
- General MacArthur

"You, you, and you ... Panic. The rest of you, come with me."
- U.S. Marine Corp Gunnery Sgt.

"Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death ... I Shall Fear No Evil.
For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing."
- At the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base Kadena, Japan

"You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3."
- Paul F. Crickmore (test pilot)

"The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire."

"If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a
helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe."

"When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane you always have
enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash."

"Never trade luck for skill."

The three most common expressions (or famous last words) in aviation are:
"Why is it doing that?"
"Where are we?"
and "OH SHIT!"

"Weather forecasts are horoscopes with numbers."

Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully
complete the flight."

"A smooth landing is mostly luck; two in a row is all luck; three in a
row is prevarication."

"Mankind has a perfect record in aviation; we never left one up there!"

"Flashlights are tubular metal containers kept in a flight bag for the
purpose of storing dead batteries."

"When a flight is proceeding incredibly well, something was forgotten."

Advice given to RAF pilots during WWII: "When a prang (crash) seems
inevitable, endeavor to strike the softest, cheapest object in the
vicinity as slow and gently as possible."

"The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely
kill you."
- Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot)

"A pilot who doesn't have any fear probably isn't flying his plane to
its maximum."
- Jon McBride, astronaut

"If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the
crash as possible."
- Bob Hoover (renowned aerobatic and test pilot)

"Never fly in the same cockpit with someone braver than you."

"If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to."

Basic Flying Rules: "Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go
near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the
appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It
is much more difficult to fly there."

"You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full
power to taxi to the terminal."