19 pithy comments on airlines from those who know

Thanks to Larry Vodra, retired airline pilot and secretary of my undergraduate class, for sending this selection of observations about airlines and airline travel. I don't know why 100% of the profanity comes from American Airlines executives.

Once you get hooked on the airline business, it's worse than dope. –Ed Acker, while Chairman of Air Florida

These days no one can make money on the goddamn airline business. The economics represent sheer hell. –C. R. Smith, President of American Airlines.

A recession is when you have to tighten your belt; depression is when you have no belt to tighten. When you've lost your trousers - you're in the airline business. –Sir Adam Thomson

If the Wright brothers were alive today Wilbur would have to fire Orville to reduce costs. –Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines, USA Today, 8 June 1994.

This is a nasty, rotten business. –Robert L. Crandall, CEO & President of American Airlines.

The thing I miss about Air Force One is they don't lose my luggage. –President George Bush Sr.

You fucking academic eggheads! You don't know shit. You can't deregulate this industry. You're going to wreck it. You don't know a goddamn thing! –Robert L. Crandall, CEO American Airlines, addressing a Senate lawyer prior to airline deregulation, 1977.

No one expects Braniff to go broke. No major U.S. carrier ever has. –The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 1980.

If we went into the funeral business, people would stop dying. –Martin R. Shugrue, Vice-chairman Pan Am.

Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress. –Captain Eric Moody, British Airways, passenger PA after flying through volcanic ash in a B-747.

The greatest sin of airline management of the last 22 years is to say, "Its all labors fault." –Donald Carty, Chairman and CEO American Airlines, 12 August 2002.

If the pilots were in charge, Columbus would still be in port. They believe the assertion that the world is flat. –Robert L. Crandall, 1993.

Think and act big and grow smaller, or think and act small and grow bigger. –Herb Kelleher

That place runs on Herb Kelleher's bullshit. –Robert W. Baker, VP American Airlines, regards Southwest Airlines.

There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane: Either you have diarrhea, or you're anxious to meet people who do. –Henry Kissinger

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. –Orson Welles, interview to celebrate his 70th birthday, The Times, 6 May 1985.

To me, an airplane is a great place to diet. –Wolfgang Puck

Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo. –Vice President Albert Gore.

I mean, they get paid an awful lot of money. The only good thing about them is they can't work after they're 60. –Judge Prudence Carter Beatty, New York Southern District Bankruptcy Court, regarding Delta Air Lines pilots, reported in The Wall Street Journal, 18 November 2005.