Joke: Flying with a parrot

On reaching his plane seat a man is surprised to see a parrot strapped in next to him. He asks the stewardess for a coffee whereupon the parrot squawks, "And get me a coke, you cow!"

The stewardess, flustered, brings back a coke for the parrot and forgets the coffee.

When this omission is pointed out to her, the parrot drains its glass and bawls "And get me another coke dogface!"

Quite upset, the girl comes back shaking with another coke but still no coffee.

Unaccustomed to such slackness the man tries the parrot's approach. "I've asked you twice for a coffee! Go and get it now you old goat!"

The next moment both he and the parrot have been wrenched up and thrown out of the emergency exit by two burly stewards.

Plunging downwards the parrot turns to him and says, "For someone who can't fly, you've got some guts!"

Humor: Some quotes from the military

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." - General MacArthur

"You, you, and you ... Panic. The rest of you, come with me." - U.S. Marine Corp Gunnery Sgt.

"Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death ... I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing." - At the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base Kadena, Japan

"You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3." - Paul F. Crickmore (test pilot)

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

"Blue water Navy truism: There are more planes in the ocean than submarines in the sky." - From an old carrier sailor

"If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe."

"When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash."

"Without ammunition, the USAF would be just another expensive flying club."

"What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots? If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; If ATC screws up, the pilot dies."

"Never trade luck for skill."

The three most common expressions (or famous last words) in aviation are: "Why is it doing that?", "Where are we?" and "Oh S...!"

"Weather forecasts are horoscopes with numbers."

"Progress in airline flying: now a flight attendant can get a pilot pregnant."

"Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight."

"A smooth landing is mostly luck; two in a row is all luck; three in a row is prevarication."

"I remember when sex was safe and flying was dangerous."

"Mankind has a perfect record in aviation; we never left one up there!"

"Flashlights are tubular metal containers kept in a flight bag for the purpose of storing dead batteries."

"Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it."

"When a flight is proceeding incredibly well, something was forgotten."

"Just remember, if you crash because of weather, your funeral will be held on a sunny day."

Advice given to RAF pilots during WWII: "When a prang (crash) seems inevitable, endeavor to strike the softest, cheapest object in the vicinity as slow and gently as possible."

"The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you." - Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot)

"A pilot who doesn't have any fear probably isn't flying his plane to its maximum." - Jon McBride, astronaut

"If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible." - Bob Hoover (renowned aerobatic and test pilot)

"Never fly in the same cockpit with someone braver than you."

"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime." - Sign over squadron ops desk at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, 1970

"If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to."

Basic Flying Rules: "Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there."

"You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal."

As the test pilot climbs out of the experimental aircraft, having torn off the wings and tail in the crash landing, the crash truck arrives; the rescuer sees a bloodied pilot and asks "What happened?" The pilot's reply: "I don't know, I just got here myself!"

Pilot dies, but jet lands safely

This can be a bad situation, given that the pilots on modern planes have a huge amount of training before they are ready to fly modern planes. The dependence on pilots being fully aware when they are flying is pretty high, which is why if a pilot is caught drinking before a flight, it is taken very seriously. So, if a pilot is incapacitated during a flight or dies, it could become a problem. There is a co-pilot, but it is still risky. So it was a wonder that things went very smoothly on this Continental flight when the pilot died of natural causes during the flight (link to article):

The pilot of Continental Flight 61 died Thursday as the plane flew from Brussels, Belgium, to Newark, New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration and Continental Airlines said. The 60-year-old Newark-based pilot died of "apparently of natural causes" about halfway through the flight, the airline said. He had 32 years of service with Continental, it said. Passengers told CNN that they were not informed, and that the only indication of a problem was that an announcement for a doctor was made during the flight.
The airline said the crew on the flight included an additional relief pilot who took the place of the deceased man, and "the flight continued safely with two pilots at the controls." The Boeing 777 landed safely at Newark International Airport at 11:49 a.m. ET Thursday, the airline said.

Good that things went well, and the passengers were not notified during the flight so there were no panic situations.

Trying to land an airplane in the absence of a pilot

When you are being driven by somebody else, and something happens to the driver, most people will attempt to take over the driving themselves. Even if that fails, there is a good chance that even an accident will not lead to severe injuries; what happens when the controls are more complicated, and the injuries / damages that would happen in an accident are more likely to happen ? We are so dependent on air travel that we do not even try to consider the case of what happens when something happens to the pilot of the aircraft; well in the case of this small craft, there was a passenger who was able to fly the aircraft with some coaching (link to article):

It's a nightmarish scenario straight out of the movies: A passenger is forced to land a plane after its pilot becomes incapacitated. The reality was playing aboard a plane over Florida on Sunday in what the National Air Traffic Controllers Association called "an Easter miracle." The pilot notified controllers that the plane was at 9,000 feet and climbing, said Steve Wallace, Miami Center spokesman for the association. However, a controller at the center tried twice to raise the pilot after that and received no response, Wallace said.
After a few moments, a different voice came over the radio: Passenger Doug White told air traffic controllers the pilot was unconscious and they needed help. His wife and two teenage daughters were flying home to Louisiana with him, he said. He reported the plane's autopilot was on and the plane was continuing to climb from 10,000 feet. White later told the Naples Daily News he has a pilot's license and about 130 hours experience flying a single engine Cessna, but had never flown the larger, faster King Air.

This was a good coincidence, however, one shudders to think what would happen in the case when there was nobody available to pilot the aircraft; the family would have been acute distress at the impending disaster.