Pilot - I’ve got a MIG on my tail!
Tower - Shut up and die like an aviator.
Huh. I thought that came from WWII, Pacific Theatre. According to Tom Wolfe, it allegedly came from Korea, as stated in The Right Stuff (first full paragraph, second column of text on the link).
EDIT: Not that I thought there were MiGs in WWII, of course (there were, but not jets; and not in the Pacific AFAIK). I thought the pilot in question said ‘Zekes’.
I was just paraphrasing from The Right Stuff. Reading your link, Wolfe says it’s a legend, so maybe the story has earlier roots.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
- From the fictitious reference The Hitchhiker’s Guide - Douglas Adams
From my uncle, who has ~30,000 accident-free hours** in the air, as we watched Dick Rutan being interviewed after his 'round-the-world flight. IIRC, Rutan said something like; There’s two kinds of pilots, Test pilots; and Bus drivers. My uncle said “I’ve been flying for over 30 years and I ain’t ever drug my wings* on the ground.”
*As they started on their circumnavigating flight, the voyager’s wings flexed on takeoff (probably due to the fuel load) and drug along the runway, ripping the winglets off.
**a sampling: F-84, F-100, F-101, C-119, DC-7, DC-8, DC-9, 707, 727, 737
Two things my instructors told me many times, which I’m sure they heard many times from their own instrutors:
Better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, than up in the air wishing you were on the ground.
There is nothing more useless in an emergency than the runway behind you, the altitude above you, and the fuel that is still in the truck.
On the wall of the pilots’ lounge at the airport I used to manage: “Taking off is the second greatest thrill in aviation. Landing is the first.”
Stewardess to passenger on flight from New York: “Wake up. We’re in Aukland.” Passenger: “That’s Oakland, right?”
Helicopters don’t fly. They just vibrate so badly the earth rejects them.
Told to me in school: The ground has a PK of 1.
Said by the same guy: Pilots wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “Y’know, I think I’m going to kill me some backenders today.”
“Aviate, navigate, communicate.”
Basic flying rule I repeat to myself when I drive.
When asked to explain why he’d landed his plane in San Francisco bay two and a half miles short of the expected runway, Japan Airlines Captain Asoh replied:
“Asoh fucked up.”
This has become known as the Asoh Defense.
Firefly:
Mal: “Yeah well, just get us on the ground.”
Wash: “That part will happen pretty definitely.”
“That’s not flying, that’s just falling with style.” - Woody (Toy Story)
That movie always cracks me up!
My Grandfather test flew this plane. He worked for Convair back then.
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet air intakes
If helicopters are so safe, how come there are no vintage/classic helicopter fly-ins?
And since Airplane has been brought up
(the above from Broomstick’s link)
I highly recommend the “ATC Humour” thread under the “ATC Issues” forum on pprune. That thread was started in 2001, it’s up to 66 pages now and still going, and there’re tons of hilarious stories to keep you occupied for a very long time. I’m not sure if it’s against the rule to provide a direct link to a thread in another message board (I seem to recall that has caused some problems before), so I’m not linking to it here, but you should be able to find it on the web easily enough.
“If Harley-Davidson built an airplane, would you fly on it?”
-Unknown and often
After a bumpy landing, a passenger told the pilot “I’m a teacher and I’d give your landing a C-.”
Pilot: The course is graded Pass/Fail.
An aviation-related Dumb Fill-In-The-Blank joke:
A dumb ___ was taking their first flight in a large airplane. As they were walking onto the plane, they spotted the manufacturer’s name near the door. The strangely spelled name amused them and they started saying it over and over again, not knowing how to pronounce it. Even dumb ___s know about the “silent e” in the English language, so they figured this was one of those cases.
“Boeing! Boeing! Boeing!” they exclaimed. Over and over again, while standing in line, waiting for people seated in row 34 to stuff their carry-ons into the business class bins. “Boeing! Boeing! Boeing!”
The flight attendant was already peeved at the people in the cheap seats taking the business class bins had enough. “Be quiet!” she hissed.
“Oing! Oing! Oing!”
“Selling the airplane. … the airplane never knows it’s inverted.”
- Tex Johnston’s reply to Bill Allen, head of Boeing after being asked what he thought he was doing when he rolled the Dash 80 over Lake Washington for the 1954 SeaFair.
Tex apparently did this maneuver many times, once in a KC-135 with an uncle of mine in the jump seat.