Aviation Accident Quotes

The experimental plane may well finish up a few fields from the end of the runway. If that is so, the voluntary occupants will have only inflicted bruises or worse upon themselves. But the reverse may occur and the experimental plane soar into the sky.

It was especially hard for me, as a professional pilot. In all of my years of flying - including combat in Korea - this was the first time that my aircraft and I had not come back together. In my entire career as a pilot, 'Liberty Bell' was the first thing I had ever lost.

The Howard Hughes I knew began to change after his plane crash in 1941.

He took a duck in the face at 250 knots.

One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane.

Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing.

I was researching a different World War II story when I came across an article in the 'Chicago Tribune' from June 1945 that knocked me for a loop. The article explained that a military plane had crashed in an impossibly remote valley of New Guinea that had been nicknamed Shangri-La.

It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.

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.

New Guinea was sort of a graveyard for planes.

When a plane lands in the Hudson and there's a Twitter user on the ferry taking a picture of it, Boom. That's it. The water is still splashing. Here's the photo of the thing.

When I met Richard Leakey, I thought, 'This is the most charismatic man I've ever met.' He has no legs. He lost them when his plane was sabotaged. But he's an interesting, sort of narcissistic guy.

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

I really liked 'Heist,' and that seems to be a popular favourite, but I think my personal favourite was 'Hero at 30,000 ft,' about the guy who ended up landing the aeroplane.

After a plane or train crash, the National Transportation Safety Board dispatches its experts within two hours. The investigators in their familiar jackets take charge of the scene, secure evidence, follow leads.