The three most common expressions in aviation are "Why is it doing that?" "Where are we?" and "Oh Shucks". Weather forecasts are horoscopes with numbers. Progress in airline flying: Now a flight attendant can get a pilot pregnant. Airspeed, altitude or brains: Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight. A smooth landing is mostly luck; two in a row is all luck; three in a row is prevarication. We have a perfect record in aviation: We never left one up there! If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter - and unsafe. Flashlights are tubular metal containers kept in a flight bag for the purpose of storing dead batteries. Navy carrier pilots to Air Force pilots: Flaring is like squatting to pee. Air Force Pilots to Navy Pukes: If you knew how to flare properly you wouldn't need a a cable plus backup cables plus save-your-ass-nets every time you attempted to land. Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding it. When a flight is proceeding incredibly well something was forgotten. - Robert Livingston, "Flying The Aeronca" Never fly the 'A' model of anything. - Ed Thompson When a prang seems inevitable, endeavor to strike the softest, cheapest object in the vicinity, as slowly and gently as possible. - Advice given to RAF pilots during W.W.II. The Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you. - Attributed to Max Stanley, Northrop test pilot A pilot who doesn't have any fear probably isn't flying his plane to its maximum. - Jon McBride astronaut If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible. - Bob Hoover If an airplane is still in one piece, don't cheat on it; Ride the bastard down. - Ernest K.Gann, advice from the 'old pelican' Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death I Shall Fear No Evil For I am 80,000 Feet and Climbing. - Sign over the entrance to the SR-71 operating location on Kadena You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3. - Paul F.Crickmore There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime. - Sign over squadron ops desk at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, 1970. (It was still there in1972.) What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots? If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; If ATC screws up, the pilot dies. If something hasn't broken on your helicopter it's about to.