Harry Reasoner Quotes

I realized how important it was to know something about aviation, and it was something I was interested in, so I followed my brother's footsteps and obtained my pilot's license.

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

If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.

I learned to fly an airplane, and had my own airplane during the 1960s.

I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.

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

Pilots are not the threat.

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

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.

I got my private pilot's license in autumn 1986.

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.

Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly.

I fly my own airplane, and I have since 1960. I rarely fly anywhere other than my own airplane.

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.

Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you don't do, you don't believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane.

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.

Ever since I bought and started flying an airplane, it's been almost exclusively for business. I love to fly. It's a great joy to me. But rarely do I use it for any kind of pleasure, other than it is a pleasure to fly.

These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a child's toy made of paper.

I fly an aeroplane, and I think a lot about how much I do not want ever to run into an optimistic air traffic controller. I just don't. I want a guy down there who's just waiting for the worst crash possible and petrified that it's going to happen on his watch. And then I feel safe flying into his territory.

I have often been asked what I think about at the moment of take-off. Of course, no pilot sits and feels his pulse as he flies. He has to be part of the machine. If he thinks of anything but the task in hand, then trouble is probably just around the corner.

As a military pilot and a test pilot, handling unusual situations and aircraft malfunctions was part of the business.

If a natural disaster like a flock of birds or a bolt of lightning causes a plane's engines to fail, you know what should be expected? That the pilot will keep his or her wits about them and do their best to save each and every soul on board. That's precisely what Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger and the rest of his crew did.