But it’s your inner ear, not your ass, that’s the problem. And your inner ear is a liar

You have to fly by the seat of your pants, they say. Meaning: A real pilot feels the plane’s every movement in his ass. But it’s your inner ear, not your ass, that’s the problem. And your inner ear is a liar. A man, blindfolded and spun slowly in a rotating chair, will think when the chair slows that it has stopped. When it has stopped, he will think it has begun to spin the other way. The mistake happens deep in his ear, among the tiny hair cells and drifting fluid inside the semicircular canals of the bony labyrinth. These are the minute, impossibly fragile internal instruments that detect the yaw, pitch, and roll of the human head—wondrous little gizmos to be sure but poorly evolved for flight.

M. Shipstead, Great Circle (2021), loc. 3,084

Flattery calms all turbulence, emotional and atmospheric

One day, before taking off from San Francisco, flight attendants summoned Hyland [the pilot] from the cockpit to deal with a frightened passenger. It turned out to be John Steinbeck, who needed several drinks to quell his fear of flying. Hyland thought the author of The grapes of wrath was America's greatest living writer, and told him so. Flattery calms all turbulence, emotional and atmospheric. Whenever Steinbeck needed to fly cross-country, he phoned Hyland to learn his schedule, and planned his flights accordingly.

A. Beam, A great idea at the time: the rise, fall, and curious afterlife of the Great Books (2008), 144