If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.
Interpretation
A successful landing is one where everyone walks away safely, and an exceptional one allows for continued use of the aircraft.
This quote from Chuck Yeager emphasizes the significance of safety in aviation. It suggests that the true measure of a landing's success is not just about completing the landing itself, but also about ensuring the safety of everyone on board. If the aircraft can be used again the next day, it marks an extraordinary outcome, highlighting the importance of proper landing techniques and safety protocols in aviation.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a flight safety seminar to highlight the importance of safe landings.
I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.
The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.
There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.
When I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did.
It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.
All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.
Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed.
The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.
As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.
I had forgotten: this is what it feels like to live in time. The lurching forward, the sensation of falling of a cliff into darkness, and then landing abruptly, surprised, confused, and then starting the whole process again in the next moment, doing that over and over again, falling into each instant of time and then climbing back up only to repeat the process.
The safety of the flying public should not be for sale. Handing air traffic control over to a private entity partly governed by the airlines is both a risk and liability we can't afford to take.
For the record, I am sticking with my claim that the simultaneous degradation of air quality, water quality, water supply, food safety, soil quality, and other environment-related variables is the main challenge to China's continued development.
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