The danger? But danger is one of the attractions of flight.

— Jean Conneau, 1911.

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.

— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. Circa early 1930's. This famous phrase has been reproduced on posters and plaques many times, with the attribution of 'anonymous'. I was told at a book signing that André Priester (one of the first Pan Am employee's) may have said it, and decided to check this with R. E. G. Davis who is curator of air transport history at the Smithsonian and author of a book on Pan Am. Ron called me back and told me the phrase pre-dates Priester, but that his research shows the originator of the phrase was Captain Lamplugh, who was quite well known in British aviation circles after W.W.I.

Beware, dear son of my heart, lest in thy new-found power thou seekest even the gates of Olympus . . . . These wings may bring thy freedom but may also come thy death.

— Daedalus to Icarus, after teaching his son to use his new wings of wax and feathers.

Regardless of the number of precautions that we take to save our necks, part of the attraction of going out on the water in the first place is the element of risk.

— Harold 'Dynamite' Payson

When you get it right mighty beasts float up into the sky. When you get it wrong people die.

— Roger Bacon, c. 1384.

In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.

— Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father, September 1900.

If you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds; but if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.

— Wilbur Wright, from an address to the Western Society of Engineers in Chicago, 18 September 1901.

All who are practically concerned with aerial navigation agree that the safety of the operator is more important to successful experimentation than any other point. The history of past investigation demonstrates that greater prudence is needed rather than greater skill. Only a madman would propose taking greater risks than the great constructors of earlier times.

— Wilbur Wright, 1901.

The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement.

— Sir Winston Churchill, 'Thoughts and Adventures,' 1932.

The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

— Thomas Huxely

There are two critical points in every aerial flight—its beginning and its end.

— Alexander Graham Bell, 1906.

The R-101 is as safe as a house, except for the millionth chance.

— Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, shortly before boarding the doomed airship headed to India on its first real proving flight, 4 October 1930. The day before he had made his will.

Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world; knowing they're going to light the bottom—and doesn't get a little worried—does not fully understand the situation.

 — John Young, after being asked if he was worried about making the first space shuttle flight.

The fundamental problem is government people—pointy-headed bureaucrats—telling people what to do. There is an environment in this city of people unwilling to admit their mistakes and move ahead. The attitude toward rule-making has been so curtailed that common sense recommendations now take years and years.

— James Hall, NTSB, 1996.

There are no new types of aircrashes — only people with short memories. Every accident has its own forerunners, and every one happens either because somebody did not know where to draw the vital dividing line between the unforeseen and the unforeseeable or because well-meaning people deemed the risk acceptable.

If politics is the art of the possible, and flying is the art of the seemingly impossible, then air safety must be the art of the economically viable. At a time of crowded skies and sharpening competition, it is a daunting task not to let the art of the acceptable deteriorate into the dodgers' art of what you can get away with.

— Stephen Barlay, 'The Final Call: Why Airline Disasters Continue to Happen,' March 1990.

I have long been on record that I believe our probable cause findings are primarily a vehicle for affecting positive changes, and not for placing blame. In accident investigation and prevention efforts, I don't believe that we are constrained to a narrow construct of causality.

— John K. Lauber, NTSB, in a board report of an April 2, 1992, CFIT accident in Hawaii, published in 1993.

What is the cause of most aviation accidents:
Usually it is because someone does too much too soon, followed very quickly by too little too late.

— Steve Wilson, NTSB investigator, Oshkosh, WI , August, 1996.

Trouble in the air is very rare. It is hitting the ground that causes it.

— Amelia Earhart, '20 Hrs 40 Mins,' 1928.

I learned that danger is relative, and the inexperience can be a magnifying glass.

— Charles A. Lindbergh

There is no problem so complex that it cannot simply be blamed on the pilot.

— Dr Earl Weiner

After the ship has sunk, everyone knows how she might have been saved.

— Italian proverb

Equipment malfunctions will also occur, particularly during subsystem development testing. In manned flight we must regard every malfunction, and, in fact, every observed peculiarity in the behavior or a system as an important warning of potential disaster. Only when the cause is understood and a change to eliminate it has been made and verified, can we proceed with the flight program.

— F.J. Bailey, Jr., NASA Manned Space Center, 'Review of Lessons Learned in the Mercury Program Relative to Spacecraft Design and Operations,' March 1963.

We fooled ourselves into thinking this thing wouldn't crash. When I was in astronaut training I asked, 'what is the likelihood of another accident?' The answer I got was: one in 10,000, with an asterisk. The asterisk meant, 'we don't know.'

— Bryan O'Connor, NASA deputy associate administrator Space Shuttle, interview in Space News, 10 January 1996.

Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.

— Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden. Complete text of the newsgroup posting with context.

If the pilot survives the accident, you'll never find out what really happened.

— Doug Jeanes

After reading . . . accounts . . . of minor accidents of light, it is little wonder that the average man would far rather watch someone else fly and read of the narrow escapes from death when some pilot has had a forced landing or a blowout, than to ride himself. Even in the postwar days of now obsolete equipment, nearly all of the serious accidents were caused by inexperienced pilots who where then allowed to fly or attempt to fly — without license or restrictions about anything they could coax into the air . . .

— Charles Lindbergh, 'We,' 1928.

If there were no risks it probably would not be worth doing. I certainly believe an airplane is capable of killing you, and in that sense I respect it.

— Steve Ishmael, NASA Test Pilot.

Airplanes may kill you but they ain't likely to hurt you.

— 'Satchel' (Leroy Robert) Paige, baseball player, circa 1959.

We tend to shy away from words like 'dangerous,' because we will not embark on anything unless it is truly thought out. But there is always an area of uncertainty . . . but we prefer to call it 'high risk' rather than 'dangerous.'

— Squadron Leader Vic C. Lockwood RAF, Principal Fixed Wing Flying Tutor, Empire Test Pilot School, 1985

Flying is inherently dangerous. We like to gloss that over with clever rhetoric and comforting statistics, but these facts remain: gravity is constant and powerful, and speed kills. In combination, they are particularly destructive.

— Dan Manningham, 'Business and Commercial Aviation' magazine.

Mix ignorance with arrogance at low altitude and the results are almost guaranteed to be spectacular.

— Bruce Landsberg, Executive Director of the AOPA Air Safety Foundation.

[Airplanes are] near perfect, all they lack is the ability to forgive.

— Richard Collins

Mountains should be abolished. At least that'd stop all those aeroplanes bumping into every other peak . . . It's just happened . . . in Nepal . . . Kathmandu . . . I was reading the story in the paper. Here . . . look."

— Hergé, in 'The Adventures of Tin Tin in Tibet,' 1960.

You land a million planes safely, then you have one little mid-air and you never hear the end of it ...

— Air Traffic Controller, New York TRACON, Westbury Long island. Opening quotation in movie 'Pushing Tin', 1999.

Recently a man asked whether the business of flying ever could be regulated by rules and statutes. I doubt it. Not that flying men are lawless. No one realizes better than they the need for discipline. But they have learned discipline through constant contact with two of the oldest statutes in the universe - the law of gravity and the law of self-preservation.
Ten feet off the ground these two laws supersede all others and there is little hope of their repeal.

— Walter Hinton, 24 July 1926, in an adventure article on flying in 'Liberty' magazine.

Learning should be fun. If you don't have fun in aviation then you don't learn, and when learning stops, you die.

— Pete Campbell, FAA

Flying is so many parts skill, so many parts planning, so many parts maintenance, and so many parts luck. The trick is to reduce the luck by increasing the others.

— David L. Baker

It's better to miss the lead story at 6 . . . than to become the lead story at 11.

— Bruce Erion, President of the National Broadcast Pilots Assn., 1999.

If the engine stops for any reason, you are due to tumble, and that's all there is to it!

— Clyde Cessna, founder of Cessna aircraft.

A 10 cent fuse will protect itself by destroying the $2,000 radio to which it is attached.

— Robert Livingston, 'Flying The Aeronca.'

No matter how interested individual employees might be, or what assistance a manufacturer offers, or how insistent a certificating authority might be — none of these factors will have a significant effect on safety without support from top management.

— John O'Brian, ALPA's Engineering and Air Safety Department.

The cost of solving the Comet mystery must be reckoned neither in money nor in manpower.

— Sir Winston Churchill

For all the scientific pizazz [in airline accident investigations], unraveling the subtle, complex chain of events leading to aviation deaths is proving more elusive than ever.

— Wall Street Journal newspaper, in a piece titled 'Why More Plane-Crash Probes End in Doubt,' 22 March 1999.

My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, next April?

— Lawrence Mulloy, Solid Rocket Booster Project Director, Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, regards Morton Thiokol's engineers' warnings, 27 January 1986.

[I'm] appalled at the Thiokol recommendation.

— George Hardy, Deputy Director of Science and Engineering, Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, regards Morton Thiokol's engineers' warnings, 27 January 1986.

If the primary [o-ring] seal does not seat, the secondary seal will seat. . . . [Morton Thiokol] recommends STS-51L launch proceed on 28 January 1986.

— Joe C. Kilminster, VP Space Booster Programs, Morton Thiokal, after a meeting in which Senior VP Jerry Mason told people to take off their engineering hats and put on their management hat, by fax to NASA, January 27 1986.

The explosion of the 'Challenger,' after twenty-four consecutive successful shuttle flights, grounded all manned space missions by the U.S. for more than two years. The delay barely evoked comment ... But contrast the early history of aviation, when 31 of the first 40 pilots hired by the Post Office died in crashes within six years, with no suspension of service.

— C. Owen Paepke

All of the people involved in the program, to my knowledge, felt 'Challenger' was quite ready to go and I made the decision, along with the recommendation of the team supporting me, that we launched.

— Jesse W. Moore, NASA associate administrator for space flight, reported in 'The New York Times,' 29 January 1986.

I know how to never have another 'Challenger'. I know how to never have another leak, and never to screw up another mirror, and that is to stop and build some shopping centers in the desert.

— J. R. Thompson, NASA deputy administrator.

All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.

— Isaac Asimov, regards the Challenger investigation, on CBS television show '48 Hours', 21 April 1988.

Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative. . . . For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

— Richard P. Feynman, 'personal observations' in an appendix to the official Challenger accident report.

The principles are the same in aviation and space safety. You always have to fight complacency—you need formal programs to ensure that safety is always kept in mind.

— Jerome Lederer, interview with the New York Times, 1967

Of course risk is part of spaceflight. We accept some of that to achieve greater goals in exploration and find out more about ourselves and the universe.

— Lisa Nowak, STS-121 astronaut, a few days prior to launch, reported in the Houston Chronicle newspaper,25 June 2006.

Every one of us is aware there is a slightly increased risk if you compare it to the day-to-day risk that we might be exposed to driving on the streets or going on commercial airlines. Each of us, independent of our nationality or space agency, believes the experience we gain in terms of scientific results, in terms of just expanding our horizons, is worth the remaining risk.

—German astronaut Thomas Reiter, a few days prior to launch of STS-121, reported in the Houston Chronicle, 25 June 2006.

I don't see it as a risk, I see it as living.

— Victoria Principal, actress and skin-care promoter, regards her planned 2009 Virgin Galactic ride. She was the first woman to call Richard Branson and buy a US $200,000 ticket. Reported in 'People' magazine, 18 June 2007.

If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

— Astronaut Virgil I. Grissom. On 27 January 1967, astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee died from a flash fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft.

The route to the target is more important than the target. We are going to go for the target, but we enjoy the route as well.

— Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, to reporters on the eve of his Space Shuttle flight, 16 January 2003. STS-107 was lost on re-entry on 1 February 2003.

In the 19th Century people were looking for the Northwest Passage. Ships were lost and brave people were killed, but that doesn't mean we never went back to that part of the world again, and I consider it the same in space exploration.

— John L. Phillips, astronaut.

Some things simply are inherent to the design of the bird and cannot be made better without going and getting a new generation of spacecraft. That's as true for the space shuttle as it is for your toaster oven.

— Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, regards space shuttle safety, eve of launch of STS-114, 25 July 2005.

I'd hate to see an epitaph on a fighter pilot's tombstone that says, "I told you I needed training." . . . How do you train for the most dangerous game in the world by being as safe as possible? When you don't let a guy train because it's dangerous, you're saying, "Go fight those lions with your bare hands in that arena, because we can't teach you to learn how to use a spear. If we do, you might cut your finger while you're learning." And that's just about the same as murder.

— Colonel 'Boots' Boothby, USAF.

Whenever we talk about a pilot who has been killed in a flying accident, we should all keep one thing in mind. He called upon the sum of all his knowledge and made a judgment. He believed in it so strongly that he knowingly bet his life on it. That his judgment was faulty is a tragedy, not stupidity. Every instructor, supervisor, and contemporary who ever spoke to him had an opportunity to influence his judgment, so a little bit of all of us goes with every pilot we lose.

— author unknown, help please!

Flying is so many parts skill, so many parts planning, so many parts maintenance, and so many parts luck. The trick is to reduce the luck by increasing the others.

— David L. Baker

I am a history major. I believe that the past is prologue. The archives bear that out. Most major aircraft accidents are not acts of God. In our recommendations we try to take what we have learned and correct situations so it shouldn't happen again.

— James Hall, NTSB, 1996.

Take nothing for granted; do not jump to conclusions; follow every possible clue to the extent of usefulness . . . . Apply the principle that there is no limit to the amount of effort justified to prevent the recurrence of one aircraft accident or the loss of one life.

— Accident Investigation Manual of the U.S. Air Force.

When you have two engines, you have two engines that can fall to bits. When you have four, you have four that can fall to bits. The less engines you have, the safer you are.

— Frank Fickeisen, chief engineer for Boeing, replying to a complaint made by the American Airlines Allied Pilots' Association about the dangers of flying two-engine airplanes across the Pacific.

The airlines spell safety with a dollar sign and the FAA practices regulation by death.

— Patricia Robertson Miller, 'Chicago Sun-Times,' 1 August 1979.

Where the water meets the sky, it was just fire.

— Jarreau Israel, eyewitness to the crash of TWA Flight 800 into the waters off New York's Long Island, 1996.

Its important not to focus so much on the statistics, but [on people's] perceptions.

— Federico Peña, U.S. Transportation Secretary, quoted in 'USA Today' 22 December 1994.

I go out of my way to stay off commuter planes. I have skipped conferences because I would not fly on marginal airlines (and because of many mishaps, I also avoided flying on ValuJet).

— Mary Schiavo, U.S. DOT Inspector General, 'Newsweek,' 20 May 1996.

Senator Wyden, I strongly take exception to her comments. . . . When we say an airline is safe to fly, it is safe to fly. There is no gray area.

— David R. Hinson, Federal Aviation Administrator, under oath to the Senate Commerce Committee, 14 May, 1996.

I have flown ValuJet, ValuJet is a safe airline, as is our entire aviation system.

— Federico Peña, 12 May 1996.
Listen to the original quote

Yes, the airline is safe. I would fly on it. It meets our standards.

— David R. Hinson, Federal Aviation Administrator, 12 May 1996. ValuJet was later grounded for not meeting FAA standards.

Regulatory non-compliance and being unsafe are two different things.

— Herb D. Kelleher, executive chairman of Southwest Airlines, immediately before a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on FAA safety enforcement held following that airline's record $10.2 million dollar fine. 'The New York Times,' 3 April 2008.

Every accident, no matter how minor, is a failure of the organization.

— Jerome Lederer

The alleviation of human error, whether design or intrinsically human, continues to be the most important problem facing aerospace safety.

— Jerome Lederer

Mishaps are like knives that either serve us or cut us as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

— James Russell Lowell

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Are we going to lose one of these [planes] sometime? Probably. But it's like the Indy 500. Is someone going to go into the wall at Indy? Probably. Is that dangerous? Yes. Could we make it safer? Yes. But would anybody watch it, then? No.

— Kirby Chambliss, five time US National Aerobatic Champion, regards flying in the Red Bull Air Races. 'Flying' magazine January 2006.

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

— Cornelius Tactitus

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

— William Shakespeare, 'King Henry the Fourth, Part One.'

We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.

— Pierre Corneille, 'Le Cid,' original French, "À vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire."

No nation can advance unless the old ideals of exploration and adventure are lived. There must be lives lost in flying, as in every other step of progress, and as many lives have been lost in the past, but there is no need to run foolish risks. The search for adventure need not entail foolhardiness. Fear is a tonic and danger should be something of a stimulant

— Lady Sophie (Mary) Heath.

Of the major incentives to improve safety, by far the most compelling is that of economics. The moral incentive, which is most evident following an accident, is more intense but is relatively short lived.

— Jerome Lederer

Corporate culture has a very real influence on the attitudes and performance of the people within an organization there is no question in my mind that management decisions and actions, or more frequently, indecision's and inaction's, cause accidents.

— John Lauber, NTSB.

The high level of safety achieved in scheduled airline operations lately should not obscure the fact that most of the accidents that occurred could have been prevented. This suggest that in many instances, the safety measures already in place may have been inadequate, circumvented or ignored.

— International Civil Aviation Organization, 'Accident Prevention Manual, 1984.

Complacency or a false sense of security should not be allowed to develop as a result of long periods without an accident or serious incident. An organization with a good safety record is not necessarily a safe organization.

— International Civil Aviation Organization, 'Accident Prevention Manual, 1984.

The hard, inescapable reality is that anyone who flies may die in an airplane.

— Stephen Coonts

The ATR-72 airplane must be shown to be capable of continued safe flight and landing when operating in any weather conditions for which operation is approved, including icing conditions. . . . As the FAA cannot issue a new or amended type certificate for an airplane with a known unsafe design feature. ATR must provide data to show that the [icing] problems experienced with the ATR-42 will not be present on the ATR-72.

— FAA, 1989.

"Ice" was a four-letter word to ATR pilots.

— Stephan A. Fredrick, 'Unheeded Warning,' 1996.

I think the least likely thing . . . is mechanical. I mean, that's just common sense.

— James Kallstrom, chief of the FBI investigation of TWA flight 800, in 'The Wall Street Journal,' 22 July 1996.

It is clear to us all that a tyre burst alone should never cause a loss of a public-transport aircraft.

— Sir Malcolm Field, head of Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, regards the Concorde, 16 August, 2000.

Remember one thing, the Pk (Probability of kill) of the ground is always 100%.

—  origin unknown, but a much used philosophy by the instructors at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) in Fallon, NV.

A little mountain will kill you just as dead as a big one if you fly into it.

— Stephen Coonts

In my experience flying search-and-rescue missions, the greatest single variable contributing to successful rescues was the preparedness and expertise of the person(s) in distress.

— Dr. Tom Gross, United States Coast Guard.

People often assume I assume I am a thrill seeker, but I am not. I do not enjoy roller coasters, and you won't find me bungee-jumping . . . . It is a disadvantage that my pursuits are inherently dangerous. A large part of my effort is to reduce risk.

— Steve Fossett, aviation record breaker, as told to Richard Branson, reported in Branson's 'Time' magazine appreciation of Steve after he went missing in the desert, 22 October 2007.

Safety at sea is the business of all hands. It is difficult to talk about safety without repeating trite phrases everyone has heard many times.

— Merchant Seaman's Manual

A hundred years ago, a ship's survival depended almost solely on the competence of her master and on his constant alertness to every hint of change in the weather. To be taken aback or caught in full sail on by even a passing squall might mean the loss of spars or canvas; and to come close to the center of a genuine hurricane or typhoon was synonymous with disaster. While to be taken by surprise was thus serious, the facilities for avoiding it were meager. Each master was dependent wholly on himself for detecting the first symptoms of bad weather, for predicting its seriousness and movement, and for taking the appropriate measures to, to evade it if possible and to battle through it if it passed near to him. There was no radio by which weather data could be collected from all over the oceans and the resulting forecasts by expert aerologists broadcasted to him and to all afloat. There was no one to tell him that the time had now come to strike his light sails and spars, and snug her down under close reefs and storm trysails. His own barometer, the force and direction of the wind, and the appearance of sea and sky were all that he had for information. Ceaseless vigilance in watching and interpreting signs, plus a philosophy of taking no risk in which there was little to gain and much to be lost, was what enabled him to survive.

Both seniors and juniors alike must realize that in bad weather, as in most other situations, safety and fatal hazard are not separated by any sharp boundary line, but shade gradually from one into the other. There is no little red light which is going to flash on and inform commanding officers or higher commanders that from then on there is extreme danger from the weather, and that measures for ships' safety must now take precedence over further efforts to keep up with the formation or to execute the assigned task. This time will always be a matter of personal judgment. Naturally no commander is going to cut thin the margin between staying afloat and foundering, but he may nevertheless unwittingly pass the danger point even though no ship is yet in extremis. Ships that keep on going as long as the severity of wind and sea has not yet come close to capsizing them or breaking them in two, may nevertheless become helpless to avoid these catastrophes later if things get worse. By then they may be unable to steer any heading but in the trough of the sea, or may have their steering control, lighting , communications, and main propulsion disabled, or may be helpless to secure things on deck or to jettison topside weights. The time for taking all measures for a ship's safety is while still able to do so. Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions lest they turn out to have been unnecessary. Safety at sea for a thousand years has depended on exactly the opposite philosophy.

— Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, USN, parts of confidential letter 14CL-45 9 (now declassified) to the Pacific Fleet, following typhoon damage to many ships, 13 February 1945.

ATTENTION! Aircraft Designers, Operators, Airmen, Managers. Anxiety never disappears in a human being in an airplane — it merely remains dormant when there is no cause to arouse it. Our challenge is to keep it forever dormant.

— Harold Harris, Vice President, Pan American World Airways, circa 1950.

For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.

— Thucydides,'The History of the Peloponnesian War,' circa 404 BC.

Man's greatest sin is the unnecessary taking of human lives.

— Benjamin O. Howard, 1954.

Better safe than sorry.

— Nineteenth-century proverb

The way to be safe is never be secure.

— Thomas Fuller

A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are for.

— Admiral Grace Hopper

If you were born on an airliner in the US in this decade and never got off you would encounter your first fatal accident when you were 2300 years of age and you would still have a 29% chance of being one of the survivors.

— Les Lautman, Safety Manager Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, 1989.

Most accidents originate in actions committed by reasonable, rational individuals who were acting to achieve an assigned task in what they perceived to be a responsible and professional manner.

—  Peter Harle, Director of Accident Prevention,Transportation Safety Board of Canada and former RCAF pilot, 'Investigation of human factors: The link to accident prevention'. In Johnston, N., McDonald, N., & Fuller, R. (Eds.), 'Aviation Psychology in Practice', 1994.

During this period Steen and Fox were killed trying a single-engine instrument approach at Moline. Then Campbell and Leatherman hit a ridge near Elko, Nevada. In both incidents the official verdict was 'pilot error,' but since their passengers, who were innocent of the controls, also failed to survive, it seemed that fate was the hunter. As it had been and would be.

— Ernest K. Gann, 'Fate is the Hunter'.