Have you got any flying clichés?

[magpie]

As I begin this rocky road into the professional flying I feel it would be remiss of me not to acquaint myself with all of the clichés that must pass around the flying schools, crew rooms and flight decks. This will, of course, allow me to talk with conviction to the non flying community!?!
In my partcular line of work it is usually 'soldiers are our most important asset'. Undoubtedly true, but grossly over used.

Any suggestions? :D

[Background Noise]

Things like runway behind you etc - although that might not apply so much to you I guess. There were a lot on here somewhere - maybe in jet blast but the search thing is down at the moment. How about

The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire or

Its always better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.

[chiglet]

A "Certain" Scottish Airline inbound to MAN
Pilot.. "We wanted a 6 mile final!"
APC .."Ring me"
Pilot ..We wanted a 6 mile final,rant rant, rave
APC, "At MAN, we have a Cossor264, an ACR2000, a Watchman, a Cat3 ILS, an SMR, What we don't have is a **crystal ball. You want 6 miles, 'kin ask!"

[gurnzee]

on a fuel bowser at STN, 'the three most useless things in aviation, runway behind you, sky above you, fuel back at the airport' :D

[criticalmass]

"There are old pilots and there are bold pilots...but there are no old, bold pilots."

A cliche perhaps, but like most it has more than just a grain of truth behind it.

Another one:-

"When you start flying you have two buckets. One is full and is labelled "Luck", the other is empty and is labelled "Experience". The trick is to fill the second bucket before the first one becomes empty!"

[RT]

Cliches from pax visiting flight deck -

How do you see out ?

Isn`t it small in here ?

Are you finished after this ( 5 hour) flight?

Who`s the pilot/Driver?

So when do you get qualified ? ( to F/O)


Any more ?

[whats_it_doing_now?]

On a flight to JFK, had a flight deck visit and the peeps asked "So when we get off in NY, are you taking the aircraft straight back?"

[Captain Sensible]

"Bloggs, when the green turns to grass, it's probably time to round out!" :)

[RW-1]

"The only time to hurry in Avaition is when you are on fire."

[Max Angle]

"A superior pilot is one who exercises superior judgement to avoid having to use superior skill!"

[gravity victim]

A bit off-topic but here's a skydiving one:
"When people look like ants, it's time to pull. When ants look like people, don't bother."

And those endless newspaper cliches, relying heavily on 'nosedives','tailspins'(presumably the opposite?) and the classic "The engine was heard to stall and the plane plunged to the ground."
:mad:

[CaptainSquelch]

Hours of boredom interupted by short spells of sheer terror and panic.

Sq

[ 08 August 2001: Message edited by: CaptainSquelch ]

[pigboat]

Don't eat the fish. Or was it the chicken?
:confused:
Carry a bomb on every flight. The odds against two bombs on the same flight are zero.

[mutt]

Pilot to ATC,

"Speedbrakes are for my mistakes, not your.."

[Hew Jampton]

Journalists have developed 'Disappeared from radar screens' into a cliche. Others include 'black box', 'runway' (as in 'the plane was on the runway for six hours' when they mean apron or taxiway), 'tarmac' and 'plane'. I wonder if journalists' appalling lack of knowledge on aviation, where I can see their errors and cliches, is matched in other areas where I can't?

[DrSyn]

Hew, I especially agree about the constant misuse of "runway" both in print and on TV/radio. It has been pointed out on PPRuNe (which many of them read) so many times that one can only assume that they just don't care.

As to "matching" accuracy in other subjects, yes, all the way! But, hey, if it sells newsprint . . . . .

As another cliche goes, Don't believe all you read.

[gravity victim]

Good one in this morning's Daily Torygraph:
"Passengers were asked to move forward to help the plane's balance after the control column jammed." :eek:

[aidybennett]

My local rag, every time it does a story about someone braving death for charity by taking a trip in a Cessna 152 etc, ALWAYS features headlines (yes, headlines) such as "High Flyer Janet takes to the Skies!" etc. Thier other favorite . . "Up , Up and Away !" .. (YAWN)

But one of my personnel favorites .. "Its not the fall that kills you, Its the sudden stop at the end." :)

[willbav8r]

Don't eat yellow snow.

[Arm out the window]

There I was, nothing on the clocks but the maker's name...

[Squawk 8888]

From damn near everyone who found out I had a PPL- "So, do you want to become a pilot?"

[criticalmass]

Arm out the window,

the second half of your cliche reads:-

"...and that was half-obscured by blood!"

[Evening Star]

Hew

I wonder if journalists' appalling lack of knowledge on aviation, where I can see their errors and cliches, is matched in other areas where I can't?

It most certainly is. :mad:

[Self Loading Freight]

Evening Star et al--

Journalists use cliches for a number of reasons, not all of them dishonorable. Sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's because of time pressure, sometimes it's because that's the best way to get something across to a reader while telling a story in a very small space. I think one of the big problems is that aviation, like any profession -- like journalism, even -- is different for those professionally involved to those who just use it.

Take a standard bugbear: cabin depressurisation at cruise. Every few months, one of these gets into the press and gets the 'terror dive at 35,000 feet' treatment in the tabloids. Then the report in the press gets onto Pprune, and the usual tut-tutting goes on about sensationalist reporting.

From the flight crew's point of view, it's a standard procedure, trained for and practiced, and not seen as something that's terribly dangerous. (Am I right on this?).

In the back, though, you've got a couple of hundred terrified people heading downwards who seconds ago were pootling along feeling safe. That's the story -- readers will be interested because they're used to flying as an uneventful business where nothing goes wrong. Certainly, the airlines don't go out of their way to prepare pax for the eventuality: all that anyone's told about is that some masks will gently descend from the heavens and we should put them on. The bit about seemingly falling out the sky is curiously omitted.

The story is that people were frightened out of their wits. You've got 150 words. For those involved, absolutely it was a 'terror dive at 35,000 feet', so that's what gets reported. If you're lucky, you'll have some of the passengers reported afterwards as saying how well Captain Nigel wrestled with the controls of the stricken craft, and perhaps F/O Bigglesworth saying that nobody was in any danger.

How would you do it?

As for inaccuracies: this is always a problem. If you're a generalist news journalist, you might be covering a riot one day, giant cats spotted in Acacia Avenue the next and an aviation incident on Friday. If people were prepared to pay enough for newspapers to have a much larger staff, and cared for accuracy over immediacy, then the story would be different.

When it comes to specialist correspondents, there's less excuse. I write about technology, and I could point to more than one nationally prominent journalist in the field whose copy and media appearances I cannot bear to see because of the breadth and depth of the mistakes therein. I worry about being in the same position myself, as I seem to write about more and more diverse subjects these days -- cell biology because of cellphone health scares, financial mechanisms because of the .com madness -- but you never get any feedback.

"Getting things right" is a huge part of aviation, and immense cost and time is spent keeping people and machinery as error-free as possible. The reasons for this are obvious and compelling. In other walks of life it's not seen as economic to do that, and I guess it isn't. Most journalists get it right most of the time, but I suppose that's not news!

R

[PAXboy]

Hew Jampton,
".. where I can see their errors and cliches, is matched in other areas where I can't?"

I have been in telecommunications for 22 years and the answer to your question is Yes.
:(

The WORST is to remember that every time an aircraft returns safley to the ground, where some component is unservicable, they are doing so, "On a wing and a prayer".

In WWII, when my father's pilot brought their Mosquito back from being over enemy territory on one engine (the first having failed, as opposed to been damaged) even THEN, they would not have used this stupid line.

[ 11 August 2001: Message edited by: PAXboy ]

[flapsforty]

SLF interesting look behind the scenes of life in the media. Thank you for posting that.

Sounds as if good journalists are spurred on by their personal integrity and a desire to deliver quality, while fighting an ongoing battle with the beancounters to recieve enough funding to enable them to do so.

I wonder why that sounds so very familiar.......... :D

[InFinRetirement]

"The pilot ejected from his uncontrolable aircraft, but first made sure it would miss some houses a mile away"....... :mad: - no, on second thoughts!

:D :D :D :D

[MaxAOB]

Watch Blackadder's 'Private Plane' and you will learn most of the really important cliches!!
:p :rolleyes: :eek: :) :D

[ 11 August 2001: Message edited by: MaxAOB ]

[fobotcso]

Back to the topic:

"Long Haul is OK but I'm not too keen on the parts between night stops." :cool:

And a military one:

The First Principle of War is "Never lose sight of your kit" ;)

[ 12 August 2001: Message edited by: fobotcso ]

[henry crun]

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
And
If at first you don't succeed, parachuting is not for you.

[innuendo]

Critical Mass and Arm out the window,
The version I heard:

There I was at 40,000 feet with nothing on the clock but the makers name. The automatic pilot jumped out with the only parachute on board, leaving me with a silkworm and a pair of knitting needles. Boy was I busy !!!!!

[innuendo]

Lets not forget the ubiquitous "Air Pockets".
I have never seen one but I know they are around because I read about them all the time.

[Evening Star]

SLF

There is a world of a difference between a specialist writing about a subject and a journalist trying to write about something that requires a specialist understanding. (And I accept you do allude to that with your comments concerning general news reporting,) To my (admittedly prejudiced) viewpoint, most journalists have an educational background in the humanities, and at the most charitable interpretation prefer to look at the drama because the facts are beyond their understanding. That is my most charitable, as I have met some who seem positively proud of not understanding anything to do with the sciences or technology (defiant insecurity?).

Some examples to consider. Part of my work is flood risk assessment, and the blind absurdity in much of the reporting about the floods last year gave me plenty to get hot under the collar about. (In fact, think the only non-technical reporting with any impression of objectivity was on Jet Blast – go figure). Then again, I have doctors and nurses amongst my friends, and you should hear what they say about the reporting concerning the NHS. My brother drives Eurostar, and I am a ‘Friend’ of the National Railway museum, so we together have a pretty clued in idea about the railways, and the misreporting there borders on the absurd. Even a casual read of Pprune is the prefect antidote for reporting about anything aviation. And so on.

It seems that there are two choices of conclusion from this. The one is that there is a mammoth conspiracy of scientists and technologists all defending their corner, or that journalists are generally incapable of understanding anything more complicated than their own educational experience and that reporting demonstrating an appalling lack of knowledge is widespread. The conspiracy theory cannot stand up, as (reductio ad absurdum) there are too many people involved to make any conspiracy viable. Therefore, that just leaves us with the conclusion that much journalism is characterised by an appalling lack of knowledge.

(Sorry, bit of a Jet Blast rant more appropriate to the dumbing down debate.)

[gravity victim]

One constant cliche that does generally help the image of flying is the eternal 'forced-landing' assumption that missing the housing estate/gasometer/primary school/garage is an act of great courage. Journos don't seem to have twigged that going for the patch of green is primarily in the interests of the person sweating at the controls! :rolleyes:

[ 13 August 2001: Message edited by: gravity victim ]

[quillshaft]

This one was banded about the crew rooms for a while.

As the F/O was standing at the flight deck door after a particularly bumpy landing a gentleman asked..."Excuse me laddie did we land or were we shot down"?

[West Coast]

"Push forward and the houses get bigger, pull back and they get smaller"

"I know there alot of money in aviation, I put it there"

"When in doubt, chicken out"

And my favorite one

"If we go, we'll be there"

Along the same lines, kinda, whats every good First Officer say to his Capt?

"Nice landing sir"

If a firm arrival...

"Must have been a gust sir"

"I will take the chicken sir"

And most important of all

"I'll take the ugly one sir"

Urban legend,
When a capt was asked was be grilled on a checkride about aircraft systems, he was asked what the non essential bus is for, his answer, "To take the first officer to and from the hotel" I can only imagine his answer to what a hot bus would be

[recommended spacing]

On telling people I'm a controller
"So you're the one with the ping pong bats!"

[pigboat]

...and the pneumatic filters will trap particles of 40 micron size..
Excuse me, how big is a micron?
Err..I don't know.
Why do you want me to know how big forty of the f*****s are?

[SOPS]

standard ones from passangers; 'do you know what all the knobs are for' and my all time favourite from last year "is that the earth we can see down there?" (Houston we have a problem) ;)

[scran]

Not sure about Danny's rules on putting web addresses on here, but there was a site ******.com that had pages and pages of them.

[scran]

See, I can't put ******! Try a search on any engine under avaiation cliches.
Or e-mail me and I'll give you the address.

[SunSeaSandfly]

How about "it's impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so goddamned ingenious!"

[A Very Civil Pilot]

The TRI said to me "."There is no such thing as a stupid question"

I asked a stupid question.

He replied: "Except a bloody stupid question".

[ 18 August 2001: Message edited by: A Very Civil Pilot ]

[Lazzzarus]

"Aviate.....Navigate.....Communicate!!!!!"

IFR : I Follow Roads


Takeoff's are optional. Landings are mandatory.


:eek:

[bird on the wire]

In the media, the heroic pilot always 'narrowly misses a school' on the way down.
Slightly off track, but still a cliche, as a female pilot I invariably get asked where would like to have the catering put? :rolleyes:

[I Follow Ridges]

The only thing a pilot should do down-wind is pee!!!!!!

I was going to slow to fly.....but too fast to crash!!!!

[bjm367-80]

MaxAOB's post of the 11th is quite correct...

Blackadder and his men are learning to fly. The Instructor is Squadron Commander Flasheart and the student is the dim-witted George.

Instructor: "Always treat you kite (aeroplane) like you treat your woman"

Student: "How do you mean Sir, taker her home to meet you mother on weekends?"

Instructor: "No, get inside her five times a day and take her to heaven and back."

...and finally,

Instructor: "All right, meet you in five minutes for take off" "Chocks away, last one backs a homo"

[Wang]

Many moons ago, I was asked by a jump-seat-rider how we transferred the drive from the wheels to the propellers when we took off!!???

[Self Loading Freight]

Evening Star--

Yes, there are some blithering idiots in print. No, not everyone's like that -- some of the cleverest, wisest and best-educated people I know are journalists. And there's a difference between papers -- I don't rate the Times at all on science (and as for the Sun. Times... sheesh! One of the many reasions I cannot read that paper), but the Indy's rather good.

There is a great deal of the old CP Snow 'two cultures' out there, in the press as elsewhere. One of my heros, who worked on radar in the second world war and was senior in the UK space industry, would respond to sniffy arts graduates by offering to recite Hamlet to them if they'd reciprocate with the laws of thermodynamics. Usually did the trick.

Incidentally, there's rather a good piece on cliches in journalism at
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=87307

R

[poetpilot]

Useful "cliche" I picked up many years back on the downwind checks.......

Brakes Off, Undercarriage Down & Welded, etc, etc.....

Helps to remember to include the u/c checks when you move from fixed to retractables.....
or maybe not, since you might just say it and forget.......but sometimes it amuses the pax.

and there's always "thumb in bum and mind in neutral" for those moments when you've been caught napping.....

[eeper]

A good one that I heard recently was not actually about flying, but applies itself quite nicely:

Experience is a bad teacher because she gives the punishment first and the lesson afterwards.

[LITOW]

If its raining you are doing the outside checks.

[CAVU]

Sorry, didn't have time to read the whole thread, but in case anyone missed it, the biggest cliche' of them all:

I'M A PILOT! :rolleyes: :eek:

[Floppy Link]

red hot amateur
an exception to "never assume" earlier for when dealing with soldiers...

always assume that the inviting gap between the trees has a wire strung across it - the sigs love those ready made aerial holders!

[roydeanne]

The take-off may be successful and the in-flight movie a means of passing the time but one certainty is that the aircraft is definitely coming down! Hopefully with 8000+ft of runway ahead.

[peteo'tube]

1. The 7 P's....**** poor planning produces **** poor performance.
2. Kick the tyres..Light the fires..Last one airborne's a poofter.
3. "Tower this is Longhorn 447 - we've three greens in the groove for the ground!!"
4. ATC.."Delta 223 what's the ride like at 370?" D223.." It's so choppy the Captain can't eat his chicken!" ATC.."United 445 what's the ride like at 350?" U445.."Dunno, we ain't had our dinner yet!"
:D

[pigboat]

Not so much cliche as it is good advice for when things go pear shaped. FTFA. (Fly The Fu****g Airplane).

[darryld]

Local cliche:

Toronto - Lester B. Pearson - is the only construction site in the world with its own International Airport!

[Dave Incognito]

There are some more good ones in this thread:
http://www.pprune.org/cgibin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=12&t=006674

Have a good one, Dave.

[radiohead]

Time to spare? Go by air.

And people are always 'plucked to safety' the by those nice Big Rescue Helicopters.

[Spatcher]

As we like to say in the Flight Control Office: Sometimes you ride the desk, Sometimes the Desk rides you!

Of course not a cliche per se:

For all of the newbies, "Get me a bucket of rotor wash" "A roll of flight line" "Left handed hammer" ect...ahh what the kids will do. :D :D ;)

[foxmoth]

I am amazed we havn't yet had
" it's better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here" :p

[big pistons forever]

FO to me after my particularly bad landing, (said with exagerated Southern US drawl). Back home we call that a " Hound Dog " landing . What's that said I. His reply " it's when the tires go YELP, YELP, YEEEEELP :D

[boris]

And for the most stupid, mind bogglingly naff piece of patronising, low level instructor-speak bo**ocks, I give you the immortal:-

Expect the unexpected!!!!!!

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

[Ramrise]

Yes RT,

"you don't do very much!!!!!"

"what's that for???????"

"are YOU going to land?????"


The last one was directed at me by a 10-12 year old smarta$$ after I explained to him that we take turns flying.

[Guernsey Donkey]

When I was doing my Instructor (FIC) course in Kidlington, my teacher, Bill Beadle, had posted a sign over the top of the blackboard where we practised presentations...

"When I am right, no-one remembers; when I am wrong, no-one forgets"

Anyone have a clue where Bill is these days?

[Max Angle]

"Never pass up the opportunity to eat, sleep or pee!"

[Karel F Jankowitz]

Hi

Alwys remember that flying is very safe, it is the crashes that is very dangerous.

If you fly long distances, remember that fuel weighs nothing in the Weight and Balance. (Dontleave without sufficent fuel)

You can never be over prepared for any flight. There are no routine flights.

[ 03 September 2001: Message edited by: Capt 210 ]

[Dockjock]

Mags are for fags
Props are for boats
Boots are for your feet

[Desk Driver]

How about

"You can never have too much fuel! until Your on FIRE!!!" ;)

[IFollowRoads]

just after I committed to ownership:

An aeroplane is
A small hole in the sky
Surrounded by aluminium
into which you pour money

[Huck]

Remember when spotting planes:
If it's ugly, it's British;
if it's wierd, it's French;
if it's ugly AND wierd, it's Russian.

Also-

Airplanes fly from Bernoulli, not Marconi!
(never drop the airplane to pick up the mike....)

[hairy_kiwi]

It is what it is. :eek: (i.e. Don't waste time over-planning.) One of the favourite expressions of Mike Briggs, Triple A Flying.

[AntiCrash]

You have to get pretty low to land one of these things! :D

[Send Clowns]

Always try to keep the number of landing equal to the number of take-offs.

Never pass gas (not an entreaty to keep wind to yourself, this means never turn down fuel!)

For when you do any procedural instrument flying and have to get clearance to descend 'if you can't go down, slow down'.

For when flying a light twin, the remaining engine after a failure is 'the engine that flies you to the site of the crash'.

[Liverlittle]

Some from the old days (from the mess, old boy)

"If you've got to cheat to win, win."

"Two certainties in life, death and nurses. They're working on death!"

"Martin-Baker Letdown" = ejection

[G SXTY]

From a certain film featuring lots of RayBans, testosterone & Kelly McGillis with a PhD in Astrophysics:

“I feel the need, the need for speed.”
“Remember boys, there’s no points for second place.”
Oh, and of course;
“If you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog sh*t outta Hong Kong.”

Anyone remember what it was called? ;)

[Wizofoz]

There I was, flat on my back, no s### thought I was gonna DIE!! :eek: :eek:

There was nothing no the clock except the makers name, and that was in Polish and covered in BLOOD!!! :mad: :mad:

:D :p :D

[frogair]

That prop up front is just a big fan to keep the pilot cool; 'cause see how he starts sweating when it stops...

(turbo-prop pilot to jet pilot): I actually prefer a slow screw over a quick blow job...

And one especially for The Guvnor: Know how you make a small fortune in aviation? Start with a big one...

:p

[ 13 September 2001: Message edited by: Frog Air ]