Dave Barry Quotes

There is something about the airline industry that really grabbed me.

Nothing will ever have the impact that 9/11 had on Boeing and on the world. It just changed things overnight.

And ever since then [I] have set up businesses basically out of frustration. I mean, I set up Virgin Atlantic with one second-hand 747 because I hated the experience of flying on other people's airlines. And I thought, you know, I could try to create the kind of airline that I'd like to fly on. And people liked it.

Any serious airline has to look at a worldwide network.

If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience.

In Germany air became generally accepted Berlin in this area. It operated with 45 airplanes within the Low Cost range from Germany, and is one the most successful carriers in Europe.

I used my aviation contacts to open a travel agency. I used to book Caribbean flights.

You can't imagine a world, quite frankly, without a safe and secure aviation system. And so our job is to really focus on that, and what we need to do to keep it safe and secure.

Historically, Heathrow has been something of a joke, outweighed by its excellent connections. We have to aspire to having an airport at Heathrow with two runways which is a world-class airport. It's a big challenge.

When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew.

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.

Regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anti-competitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.

PAL continues to be the country's leading airline and significant promoter of Philippine tourism.

I think it's inevitable that aviation is a part of the economic growth that surrounds airports.

I don't want to be one of those comics who says, 'Hey, what's wrong with air travel?' and stuff like that.

Local airports serve an important role as economic and public safety assets for communities across the state.

There's no anger in my act towards anyone other than myself... and maybe airlines.

Regulation has gone astray. . . . Either because they have become captives of regulated industries or captains of outmoded administrative agencies, regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anticompetitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.

Here in the news media, our focus is on speed. When we get hold of some new and possibly inaccurate information, our highest priority is to get it to you, the public, before our competitors do. If the news media owned airlines, there would be a lot less concern about how many planes crashed, and a lot more concern about whose plane hit the ground first.

The air travel industry moves into a new phase every five to six years.

I don't know what compassionate conservative means. Does it mean cutting kids out of after school programs, Does it mean drilling in the arctic wildlife refuge? Does it mean sending kids to Iraq without body armor that's state of the art?

Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clean air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery.

The planes are crowded and noisy and late, and everybody hates everybody. If armed terrorists had tried to hijack any of the flights I've been on lately, we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls you get with your in-flight meals.

Motto of the U.S. airline industry - "We're Hoping to Have a Motto Announcement in About an Hour."

Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure. ... The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy.