fly blind

Idioms  

1. Feel one's way, proceed by guesswork, as in There are no directions for assembling this furniture, so I'm flying blind. This hyperbolic expression dates from World War II, when it was used by pilots who could not see the horizon and therefore had to rely on instruments. It was transferred to broader use soon afterward.

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Example Sentences

“And it was wrong to fly blind and to announce those plans without reassuring people with the discipline of the Office for Budget Responsibility that we actually can afford to pay for them,” he added.

From Seattle Times • Oct. 15, 2022

Thank you for the Sept. 20 op-ed “We don’t have to fly blind into the next pandemic,” by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence H. Summers, which proposed ways to prepare now for future pandemics.

From Washington Post • Oct. 1, 2021

This has long been a missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of American pandemic response — leaving the country to essentially fly blind in tracking outbreaks and identifying potentially infectious residents.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 10, 2021

Yet states and local leaders have also complained about federal stutter-steps in getting test kits out to every corner of the country, saying it forced them to fly blind in the response.

From Washington Times • Mar. 22, 2020

"We fly blind without objective measures," added Sandy Kress, a lawyer who helped launch the era of aggressive testing as an adviser to President George W. Bush.

From Reuters • Jun. 12, 2012