A Mile Of Runway Quotes

Me, while I'm heading west, asleep at Mach 0.83, or 455 miles an hour, or true airspeed, the FBI is bomb-squading my suitcase on a vacated runway back in Dulles. Nine out of ten times, the security task force guy says, the vibration is an electric razor. The other time, it's a vibrating dildo. Imagine, the task force guy says, telling a passenger on arrival that a dildo kept her baggage on the East Coast. Sometimes it's even a man. It's airline policy not to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. Use the indefinite article. A dildo. Never your dildo. Never say the dildo accidentally turned itself on. A dildo activated itself and created an emergency situation that required the evacuating of your baggage.

The people of this world are no longer thousands of miles away, but just down the runway.

Sometimes I’ve thought it’s only our challenges that sharpen us, and change us, too—a mile-long runway and nineteen hundred pounds

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.

The Hennessey Venom GT is the most powerful car that can win against any challenger on the raceway.  The engineers who built this car even tested it out on the space shuttle’s runway!  This unbeatable top racer’s top speed is a mind-blowing 270 miles per hour!!!  Do you think that any other car will ever beat this one?

authorities were less vigilant during a storm. Even so, he was nervous. He had flown in to Cuba many times. But never here. And tonight he would have preferred to have been going almost anywhere else. Cayo Esqueleto. Skeleton Key. There it was, stretching out before him, twenty-five miles long and six miles across at its widest point. The sea around it, which had been an extraordinary, brilliant blue until a few minutes ago, had suddenly darkened, as if someone had thrown a switch. Over to the west, he made out the twinkling lights of Puerto Madre, the island’s second-biggest town. The main airport was farther north, outside the capital of Santiago. But that wasn’t where he was heading. He pressed down on the joystick and the plane veered to the right, circling over the forests and mangrove swamps that surrounded the old, abandoned airport at the bottom end of the island. The Cessna had been equipped with a thermal intensifier, similar to the sort used in American spy satellites. He flicked a switch and glanced at the display. A few birds appeared as tiny pinpricks of red. More dots pulsated in the swamp: crocodiles or perhaps manatees. And a single dot about twenty yards from the runway. He turned to speak to the man called Carlo, but there was no need. Carlo was already leaning over his shoulder, staring at the screen. Carlo nodded. Only one man was waiting for them, as agreed. Anyone hiding within half a mile of the airstrip would have shown up on the radar. It was safe to land.

I wonder what it must be like to have a life full of experiences. All these girls are around my age, but what they're done - performing around the world, strutting down runways - it's all a million miles away from my odd little life. They're all so accomplished. I should feel envious. Yet, all I feel is embarrassment.

When Boeing prepared to launch the design of the 727 passenger plane in the 1960s, its managers set a goal that was deliberately concrete: The 727 must seat 131 passengers,8 fly nonstop from Miami to New York City, and land on Runway 4-22 at La Guardia. (The 4-22 runway was chosen for its length—less than a mile, which was much too short for any of the existing passenger jets.) With a goal this concrete, Boeing effectively coordinated the actions of thousands of experts in various aspects of engineering or manufacturing. Imagine how much harder it would have been to build a 727 whose goal was to be “the best passenger plane in the world.

The world headquarters of Fukai Semiconductor was housed in a mammoth, sprawling building of glass, polished aluminum and native rock that seemed to be a hybrid design between traditfonal Japanese architecture and something off the drawing board of Frank Lloyd Wright, though there was almost nothing Western about the place. Situated along the shore of the bay, the massive structure rose in some places five stories above the water, each level cantilevered at a different angle thirty and sometimes fifty or sixty yards without apparent support. In other places the building was low, and followed the sinuously twisting shoreline as if it had grown out of the rock. About a half-mile north, still along the bay, the end of the main runway was marked by a cluster of hangars, a 747 jetliner with Fukai's stylized seagull emblem painted in blue on the tail, parked in front of one of them.

I didn’t mean hang glide. I meant do things that give you an adrenaline rush?” “I still get one every time I take off. When I’m barreling that plane down the runway at a hundred and eighty miles an hour and I pull back on the yoke to lift the nose and we break from the ground…it’s like the first time, every time.” “So you’re a thrill seeker.” Carter shrugged. “At times. Life without a little thrill is boring, beautiful.

The boys reached the flight line just as Randy was completing a preflight check of the aircraft. In a few minutes they were strapped in their seats and taxiing toward the active runway. The pilot remarked, “Because of the direction of the wind, that runway is the only one I can use to head the plane into the wind.” He tuned his radio to the proper frequency and contacted Bayport tower. An immediate reply crackled from the plane’s receiver. “Ace Service Flight Two-Six is cleared to runway One-Niner. Wind’s from the southeast at fifteen knots. Altimeter setting, Two-Niner-Eight-Six.” Randy paused to check his instruments, controls, and engine magnetos. The tower then cleared him for immediate take-off. Turning into the runway, he eased the throttle ahead. Soon he and his passengers were airborne and taking a course to the northwest. The boys gazed down at the earth below. The terrain became more hilly with each passing mile. The expanses of wooded areas looked like rumpled deep-green carpet. Here and there, lakes and small streams reflected the sun in bright

For us to solve our problems as quickly and painlessly as possible, we want to be completely clear about the real problem hidden underneath the roots. Asking “What is the real problem you are trying to solve?” sounds simple. Knowing the true problem you are trying to solve and then solving it, however, isn’t always easy. Experts in air navigation understand how important it is to stay perfectly on course. If a pilot steers a plane one degree off course, they will be 92 feet off course by the time they’ve traveled one mile. Pilots don’t get to miss the runway by 92 feet. The clearer you are about your own problem, the more likely you are to land in the right spot.

Now, if you’ll indulge me for a minute, I want you to think about the process of boarding a commercial airplane. You wait until your group is called. You step onto an airplane that will rush down the runway and lift you into the air, traveling five hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet, for however long it takes to get where you’re going. You greet the flight attendants, make your way to your seat and buckle in for the ride. Usually before the flight departs, you hear from the people in the cockpit, whose job it is to deliver you safely to your destination. In most cases, you don’t see their faces until you’re disembarking, when you finally see the pilots standing at the head of the aisle to thank you for flying with their airline. You’ve just put your life in the hands of two people you’ll probably never see again without having seen their faces beforehand or knowing a thing about their credentials. Many of us have probably flown with a commercial pilot on his or her first day at the controls, yet it never occurs to us to question whether they should be there.

They were assembling a rocket there. It was a big rocket. It all more or less made sense. There was no cargo too big to be barged up the Columbia River and then trucked the last few miles to Moses Lake. There was no airplane that couldn’t be accommodated by that runway. There was no object that the aerospace machine shops of the Seattle area couldn’t build. And from this latitude, the same as Baikonur, a well-worn and understood flight plan could take payloads to Izzy. A mere four days later, Doob stood in the bed of a rusty pickup truck with a random assortment of space rednecks, hoisting a longnecked beer bottle into the sky in emulation of the rocket lifting off from the pad. They all hooted and screamed as they watched it arc gracefully downrange and take off in the general direction of Boise. And the next morning, when they had all sobered up, they got busy building another rocket.

As much as I hated flying, I hated the anticipation of flying more. And all the waiting around was making me squirrelly. One and a half hours already shot. Couldn’t we just drive there at six hundred miles per hour? We can send a man to the moon, but no one has figured out how to build one long runway across the country? Gas up the plane and just drive that sucker. So it would take a little longer. So what? At least we’d know what we were up against. Currently, we were involuntary captives. Tarmac delays sucked.

In reality, Edmond loved attention, and admitted to keeping his plane at Sabadell only to have an excuse to drive the winding roads to his home in his favorite sports car—a Tesla Model X P90D that Elon Musk had allegedly hand-delivered to him as a gift. Supposedly, Edmond had once challenged his jet pilots to a one-mile drag race on the runway—Gulfstream vs. Tesla—but his pilots had done the math and declined.

Someone’s gotta do it. No one’s gonna do it. So I’ll do it. Your honor, I rise in defense of drunken astronauts. You’ve all heard the reports, delivered in scandalized tones on the evening news or as guaranteed punch lines for the late-night comics, that at least two astronauts had alcohol in their systems before flights. A stern and sober NASA has assured an anxious nation that this matter, uncovered by a NASA-commissioned study, will be thoroughly looked into and appropriately dealt with. To which I say: Come off it. I know NASA has to get grim and do the responsible thing, but as counsel for the defense—the only counsel for the defense, as far as I can tell—I place before the jury the following considerations: Have you ever been to the shuttle launchpad? Have you ever seen that beautiful and preposterous thing the astronauts ride? Imagine it’s you sitting on top of a 12-story winged tube bolted to a gigantic canister filled with 2 million liters of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Then picture your own buddies—the “closeout crew”—who met you at the pad, fastened your emergency chute, strapped you into your launch seat, sealed the hatch and waved smiling to you through the window. Having left you lashed to what is the largest bomb on planet Earth, they then proceed 200 feet down the elevator and drive not one, not two, but three miles away to watch as the button is pressed that lights the candle that ignites the fuel that blows you into space. Three miles! That’s how far they calculate they must go to be beyond the radius of incineration should anything go awry on the launchpad on which, I remind you, these insanely brave people are sitting. Would you not want to be a bit soused? Would you be all aflutter if you discovered that a couple of astronauts—out of dozens—were mildly so? I dare say that if the standards of today’s fussy flight surgeons had been applied to pilots showing up for morning duty in the Battle of Britain, the signs in Piccadilly would today be in German. Cut these cowboys some slack. These are not wobbly Northwest Airlines pilots trying to get off the runway and steer through clouds and densely occupied airspace. An ascending space shuttle, I assure you, encounters very little traffic. And for much of liftoff, the astronaut is little more than spam in a can—not pilot but guinea pig. With opposable thumbs, to be sure, yet with only one specific task: to come out alive. And by the time the astronauts get to the part of the journey that requires delicate and skillful maneuvering—docking with the international space station, outdoor plumbing repairs in zero-G—they will long ago have peed the demon rum into their recycling units.

The plane isn’t taxiing that fast on the runway yet. I’m sure the road rash I’d endure from the jump out the window onto the asphalt would burn a whole lot less than Zanders’ gaze.