Alan Shepard Quotes

I became an air display pilot. I used to teach it. I was an examiner for a few years as well. It was great fun. I would still be doing it now if pretty much everyone I knew who was doing it hadn't died. In the first team I joined there were six people in it. By the time I stopped, there was only me and one other left - everyone else had died.

Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.

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

I did want to be a pilot. I wanted to be a military pilot because I liked airplanes. I was interested in modeling airplanes.

From a very early age, I wanted to fly aeroplanes.

My dad is a pilot so I think I was born with the travel bug.

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.

Flying, I continue to be involved with. I love flying, and I hope to keep doing it so long as I can pass my medicals and stay proficient.

As astronauts know better than anyone else, risks, incidents, and mishaps are inevitable in the development of any high-performance vehicle. The emergence of supersonic flight during the 1940s and of the Century Series of fighters in the 1950s came with the loss of several test pilots. Still, it was a glorious time.

Between the ages of 12 and 15, I wanted to be a pilot because I thought it would be glamorous and dangerous.

The way Leo figured it, he spent more time crashing than he did flying. If there was a rewards card for frequent crashers, he'd be, like, double platinum level.

After two wars, I have been in danger too often to bother very much about being killed, and when it comes, I would prefer that it should happen in an aeroplane, since aeroplanes have been the best part of my life.

I love flying; I love aircraft, and you could say I've had a love affair with flight since I was a child. I travel a huge amount. I use airports, and as a pilot, I've flown in and out of airports thousands of times, so really, I have a fairly broad perspective.

It was a unique childhood, to say the least. My father was born in Patiala to refugee parents and was a part of the Indian Air Force. The talented few amongst the Air Force pilots are made test pilots. Test pilots are best suited to look at the space programme as they are trained to expect the unexpected.

I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.

Airplanes may kill you, but they ain't likely to hurt you.

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

If it's really beautiful weather, sometimes I might take a helicopter out. I got my license in 1999.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

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.

I read, studied, and learned everything I could find about aviation. It was my greatest desire to become a pilot. I could already picture myself in the cockpit of an airliner or in a military fighter plane. I felt deep in my heart this was my thing!

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.

Dad endorsed my learning to fly so he would have a live-in pilot, one he could get in touch with at any time.

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.