Aviation Risk Quotes

In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year.

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.

I also want to take cognizance of the fact that this flight was made out in the open with all the possibilities of failure, which would have been damaging to our country's prestige. Because great risks were taken in that regard, it seems to me that we have some right to claim that this open society of ours which risked much, gained much.

I hope you either take up parachute jumping or stay out of single motored airplanes at night.

Aircraft are always going to be something that terrorists are interested in because you bring down an airliner, you have drawn the world's attention.

No reporter is flying around in borrowed twin-engine airplanes.

If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead.

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.

When I was in motor racing, I had taken the decision to risk my life. But when you run an airline, and more than 200 people want to go from A to B - and they don't arrive - that's a different responsibility.

Being a display pilot is probably the thing I've been most proud of in my life. Don't really fly anymore now though. I have three small children and as most of my friends were killed in different accidents, I realised that it was probably just a matter of time before I went that way.

My parents were the only people to go to South Africa from Australia in a single engine plane... the two of them, no radio... you had to fly down low to see the street signs to know which city you were in... most people couldn't speak English.

There are downsides to a lot of things. There are downsides to flying - people die every now and then. Do you want to stop all air flights? There are downsides to pharma; sometimes they're misused. Do you want to stop using pills?

But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.

Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.

Pilots are not the threat.

New Guinea was sort of a graveyard for planes.

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.

Of the first 40 pilots to fly for the U. S. Air Mail Service ... 31 died in crashes.

I then realized my appearance was a bit odd. My right leg was no longer with me. It had caught somewhere in the top of the cockpit as I tried to leave my Spitfire.