Gordon Bethune

Grounding airplanes to cover your butt would never have let Orville or Wilbur change the world. We would still be spending weeks to cross the Atlantic to do business in London.

The substitute for knowledge is money.

When you actually take the time to go over to somebody's office and personally thank them - whether their office is in a cockpit of an airplane, or in a break room - that's an actual manifestation of interest in them. You need to take the time to show the people around you who work for you that you're interested in them.

A bankruptcy judge can fix your balance sheet, but he cannot fix your company.

There is no economy without airlines. Airfreight runs the world. There is no Honolulu without an airplane. This is a very complex system. If you take it down, you can't build it back up overnight.