The Greatest Aviation and Flying Movie Quotes

If you’re like most pilots, you love a good aviation movie. Here are some memorable quotes from movies about flying and aviation — some funny, some insightful, and some that are all-time classics, courtesy of Torontoairways.com.

Airplane (1980)

1. Dr. Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?
Ted Striker: Surely you can’t be serious.
Dr. Rumack: I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley.

2. Rex Kramer: Striker, listen, and you listen close: Flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.

3. Elaine Dickinson: There’s no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?

4. Reporter: What kind of plane is it?
Johnny: Oh, it’s a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it looks like a big Tylenol.

Top Gun (1986)

5. Maverick: I feel the need…
Maverick, Goose: …the need for speed!

6. Stinger: Maverick, you just did an incredibly brave thing. What you should have done was land your plane! You don’t own that plane, the taxpayers do! Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash. You’ve been busted, you lost your qualifications as section leader three times, put in hack twice by me, with a history of high speed passes over five air control towers, and one admiral’s daughter!

7. Air Boss Johnson: Two of your snot-nose jockeys did a fly-by on my tower at over 400 KNOTS! I want somebody’s butt, I want it now, I’ve HAD IT!

8. Stinger: And if you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog s*** out of Hong Kong!
Maverick: Yes, sir!

9. Iceman: You can be my wingman any time.
Maverick: Bulls***! You can be mine.

Flight (2012)

12. Captain Whitaker: No one could have landed that plane like I did. No one.

13. Hugh Lang: [to Whip] The FAA and the NTSB took 10 pilots, placed them in simulators, recreated the events that led to this plane falling out of the sky. Do you know how many of them were able to safely land the planes? Not one. Every pilot crashed the aircraft, killed everybody on board. You were the only one who could do it!

Aviator (2004)

14. Howard Hughes: I’m Howard Hughes, the aviator.

15. Katharine Hepburn: [flying Howard’s plane] Howard, there’s a rather alarming mountain heading our way.

16. Howard Hughes: [pensively weighing options] I could do that.
TWA Executive: Do what?
Howard Hughes: Buy it.
TWA Executive: You wanna buy the airline?
Howard Hughes: Well why not? We don’t want a bunch of pencil-pushers gettin’ in the way of us makin’ our plane now do we?

Flyboys (2006)

17. Grant: [walking away from plane crash] Let me guess, you’re here because you thought it’d be fun to fly airplanes. Go home while you still can.

18. Eddie Beagle: [after shooting down a German plane with his hook hand] Beware the hook!

Flight of the Phoenix (2004)

19. Elliott: [to Towns, about the makeshift plane] The design is perfect, the only flaw is that we have to rely on you to fly it.

The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

20. Axel Olsson: Guess who’s still alive… ME!

21. Ezra Stiles: It’s gonna be a monoplane.
Waldo Pepper: A monoplane. Are you telling me you’re building me an airplane with only one wing?

Ezra Stiles: Just thought you’d like to know: the biplane’s gone the way of the Dodo.

22. Dillhoefer: Now, here’s what we do. We put her up on the wing…
Duke: And she’ll fake being afraid…
Dillhoefer: Right.
Duke: And the wind will blow her clothes off!
Dillhoefer: Yes! Yes!
Waldo Pepper: Wait! Why would the wind blow her clothes off? When I’m wing-walking, the wind doesn’t blow MY clothes off.
Dillhoefer: Fool! Nobody wants to come and see YOU with YOUR clothes off!