Definition of "aviate" []

• To operate an aircraft; fly. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "WILEY: The rule is that you aviate, navigate and then you communicate."
• "They know that the pilots must adhere to the adage “aviate–navigate–communicate”—strictly in that order."
• "If, in fact, he was alone in that airplane, and he was concentrating on trying to fix whatever was wrong, he might have had his head buried in his instruments, doing whatever needed to be done to try to take care of that problem, and might have forgotten the cardinal rule of flying, that, when you're in trouble, first thing you do is aviate the airplane."