Chris Hadfield Quotes

When you design it, think how you would feel if you had to fly it! Safety first!

There's simply no substitute for experience in terms of aviation safety.

In any aircraft you fly, you always think about what can go wrong, and you plan for it in advance. You always have back-up plans.

If you don't trust the pilot, don't go.

With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe.

This is a people-centric system. Planes are guided and controlled by people. We will not compromise on safety.

Pilots are not the threat.

On my job I end up jumping out of planes. Last week I got in an 18-wheeler and drove down a runway onto a skid track. The week before that they put me in a car and sunk me to the bottom of a lake to see if I could escape without an oxygen tank.

The thing is helicopters are different from airplanes An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or incompetent piloting, it will fly.

I feel very confident that Americans flying in the air are safe and that only under the most dire of circumstances would our pilots ever even request permission to do that.

During my career as an airline pilot, I had the opportunity to be a check and training captain. Part of this job was to train and test experienced pilots to ensure that they had the necessary knowledge and skills to safely and efficiently operate those magnificent big jets.

Flying, for some reason, has never been my favorite thing, but after taking some aviation classes and reading about it and learning about it... They've been doing this for over a hundred years, they've been to the moon and back; they kind of have a good system going here.

My husband has some very interesting hobbies, and through him, I've learned to fly and earned my pilot's license. Together, we fly all over the United States. Since our children are all grown now, we also travel a great deal in Europe, but we take commercial flights because our plane is not really equipped to make transatlantic flights.

We're doing a lot of inspection on the leading edge of our wing on 114 and 121, the first two flights.

If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

When a test pilot comes off a flight, there is typically another pilot who is going to take it up, and he believes in the debriefing. You don't keep something to yourself.

Through the misguided notion that writing about flying was easy, I had McCone become a pilot. When I learned that research in books wasn't enough, I forced myself to take lessons.

I've spent my life as an airplane mechanic, pilot, aircraft manufacturer and airline CEO who never lost a life or an airplane. I am considerate of the risk we take every time we fly. I also know we need to fly and always to improve safety.

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

I've spent an awful lot of my time in the air. I've had everything happen to me in a plane that could happen. Except a crash.

Yes, it's true, I have bought a helicopter. I really like it. I can't fly it, but I plan to get a licence one day.

Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute or reckless. One crash in a thousand may be unavoidable because God wills it so - not more than that.

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.

People put themselves in difficult situations in lots of different areas. What you count on is people taking every precaution. The aerospace industry is unique in this aspect because a thousandths-of-an-inch mistake can cause spectacular failures.

In racing, you want to win - there are no rules, and you can do whatever you want. Flying a plane is the opposite: you respect rules and fly to the rules. You can't possibly compare the two.