50 Fun Facts About Airliners

NASA modified two 747 jumbo jets to carry which spacecraft piggyback on top of the fuselage?

The Space Shuttle rode home on an airliner's back whenever it landed away from Florida, hoisted into place by a giant gantry called a Mate-Demate Device.

Airbus ferries wings and fuselage sections between its factories in a bulbous transport named after which whale?

Beluga started as a nickname for the aircraft officially called the Super Transporter, and it caught on so well that Airbus adopted it.

D. B. Cooper parachuted from the rear airstair of which three-engined airliner during his 1971 hijacking?

The Boeing 727 had a staircase built in under its tail, and after copycat hijackings the type was fitted with a latch, the Cooper vane, that stops the stairs lowering in flight.

Heating at supersonic speed made Concorde's fuselage do what during each transatlantic flight?

Concorde would stretch several inches in cruise, by as much as 300 mm, as air friction heated its aluminium skin.

Which heavy metal band toured the world in a 757 airliner named Ed Force One, flown by its singer?

Iron Maiden's frontman Bruce Dickinson was also a commercial airline pilot, and the jet's name was picked in a competition on the band's website.

Most modern airliners use a design known as a wet wing, which stores what inside the sealed wing structure?

Jet fuel fills the sealed wing itself rather than separate tanks or bladders inside it, which saves weight.

Airliner tyres are usually inflated with which gas rather than ordinary compressed air?

Nitrogen is dry and inert, so tyre pressure stays steadier between a hot runway and the cold of cruise, and a badly overheated tyre is less likely to explode.

Which four-engined jetliner did actor John Travolta fly as his personal aircraft, painted in vintage Qantas colours?

The Boeing 707 was an ex-Qantas jet that Travolta named Jett Clipper Ella after his children, and he flew it as a goodwill ambassador for the airline.

Which airliner, the largest passenger aircraft ever built, carries travellers on two full-length decks?

The Airbus A380 is certified to carry up to 853 people, though a typical three-class layout seats about 525 across its two decks.

Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed which type of airliner on the Hudson River after a bird strike in 2009?

The Airbus A320 lost both engines to a flock of Canada geese and was on the river less than four minutes later, and all 155 people aboard survived.

Which name won a public vote in 2003 to become the title of the 787 airliner, then in development?

Dreamliner came out on top of an online poll that drew about 500,000 votes, held while the project was still known as the 7E7.

Which airline began scheduled Concorde flights on the same day as Air France in January 1976?

British Airways kept its supersonic fleet flying for 27 years, until the last aircraft were retired in 2003.

What feature of the passenger cabin defines a wide-body airliner such as the 767 or the A350?

Two aisles give room for seven or more seats in each row, which is why the type is also called a twin-aisle; the largest earned the nickname jumbo jet.

Which British jetliner carried the world's first fare-paying jet passengers, from London to Johannesburg in 1952?

The De Havilland Comet flew the multi-stop route for BOAC, and two years later metal-fatigue crashes grounded the whole fleet.

Which twin-engined propeller airliner of the 1930s was built in thousands for wartime service as the C-47?

The Douglas DC-3 was one of the first airliners that could turn a profit on passengers alone, without mail subsidies, and military versions took production past 16,000.

Which airliner's MAX version was grounded worldwide for twenty months after two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019?

The Boeing 737 MAX flew again only after the maker redesigned the computer architecture behind MCAS, the flight-control software at the centre of both crashes.

Which Soviet supersonic airliner flew two months before Concorde and was nicknamed Concordski in the West?

The Tupolev Tu-144 beat its Western rival into the air but carried passengers on only 55 flights before it was withdrawn.

Embraer, maker of the E-Jet family of regional airliners, is based in which country?

Brazil's government funded Embraer's founding in 1969 to build a home-grown aerospace industry, and it grew into the largest civil aircraft maker after Boeing and Airbus.

Airbus builds its A350 wide-body airliners on a final assembly line in which city in southern France?

Toulouse is also where the company is run day to day, from a main office in the suburb of Blagnac, although its legal seat is in the Dutch city of Leiden.

Jet A-1, which powers most of the world's jet airliners, is a refined form of which liquid once burned in lamps?

Kerosene, known as paraffin in Britain, has a higher flash point than the gasoline burned by piston aircraft, which makes it less flammable and safer to handle.

Which car maker built the three-engined Trimotor airliner of the 1920s, nicknamed the Tin Goose?

Ford's companies turned out 199 of the airliners between 1925 and 1933, after Henry Ford and his son Edsel invested in the Stout Metal Airplane Company.

Pan American's Clipper airliners crossed the Atlantic and Pacific in the late 1930s as which kind of aircraft?

Flying boats suited the ocean routes of Pan American, which asked makers for double the passenger payload of its earlier Martin M-130.

Which famous aviator, a major TWA stockholder, pushed the airline to order the Lockheed Constellation in 1939?

Howard Hughes had TWA ask for a 40-passenger airliner able to cross the United States, with a range of 3,500 miles.

The Lockheed Constellation propeller airliner, nicknamed Connie, is recognised by which unusual feature at the rear?

A triple tail kept the aircraft low enough to fit into the hangars of its day.

Which devices turn an airliner's engine exhaust partly forwards to help slow the aircraft after landing?

Thrust reversers either deflect the exhaust as it leaves the engine or block its path so that it escapes through the sides, angled partly forwards.

Concorde's only fatal accident, in July 2000, happened moments after take-off from which city?

Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport was the scene: the jet ran over debris dropped by the previous departure, bursting a tyre whose fragments ruptured a tank in the wing.

The Airbus A220 was designed and first sold as the CSeries by which Canadian company?

Bombardier had the jet in service under its own name for two years before Airbus took control of the programme and renamed it.

Fokker, builder of the F27 Friendship and Fokker 100 airliners, was based in which European country?

The Netherlands lost its national planemaker in 1996, when Fokker went bankrupt; founder Anthony Fokker had made the name famous with First World War fighters.

The Comac C919, a narrow-body airliner that entered passenger service in 2023, is built in which country?

China is written into the model number: the C in C919 stands for both Comac and the country that builds it.

Which wide-body airliner, launched in 1990 with an order from United Airlines, is the world's largest twinjet?

The Boeing 777 is also the most-built wide-body airliner, and eight major airlines helped to shape its design.

Which rules, known by an acronym, set how far a twin-engined airliner may fly from the nearest diversion airport?

ETOPS makes sure a twin can still reach a runway on its one remaining engine, and regulators later coined the term EDTO to take the word twin out of the name.

Development of the RB211 engine for the Lockheed TriStar drove which British company into receivership in 1971?

Rolls-Royce was nationalised by Edward Heath's government because of its strategic importance, which allowed the engine, and with it the American airliner, to be finished.

Snecma of France founded CFM International, maker of the CFM56 airliner engine, in 1974 with which American company?

General Electric and Snecma split the venture 50/50, and its name joins GE's CF engine series with Snecma's M series.

The final 747 ever built was delivered in January 2023 to which American cargo airline?

Atlas Air took the last of 1,574 jumbos, closing a production run that had lasted 54 years.

Which French jetliner, the first designed for short and medium routes, entered service with SAS in 1959?

Caravelle carried its engines on the rear fuselage rather than under the wing, and it reused some designs and components from an earlier British jetliner.

The double-deck Stratocruiser airliner of the late 1940s was derived from which American wartime bomber?

The B-29 Superfortress first became the C-97 military transport, and the airliner that followed added a lower-deck lounge with seats for 14 passengers.

Elvis Presley bought which jetliner in 1975 and named it Lisa Marie after his daughter?

The Convair 880 had flown for Delta before Presley bought it, and it went on display at Graceland in Memphis.

Airbus assembles airliners in the United States at a plant in which Alabama city, chosen in 2005?

Mobile won the plant partly for its deep-water port on the Gulf of Mexico and for the industrial land at a former air force base.

The ATR 72 and the Dash 8, both familiar on short regional routes, are powered by which kind of engine?

Turboprop engines drive a propeller with a gas turbine, and on short regional hops flown at modest speeds they burn less fuel than jets.

Since the 1980s, Airbus airliners have replaced the pilot's traditional control yoke with which device?

A side-stick sits on the side console at the pilot's outboard hand, and Airbus has fitted one to every new type since the 1980s.

Digital display screens replaced rows of mechanical dials to give modern airliner flight decks which nickname?

Glass cockpit screens took over from mechanical instruments that pilots had nicknamed steam gauges.

Which small gas turbine lets a parked airliner run its electrics and start its main engines without ground equipment?

The auxiliary power unit first appeared on a jetliner in 1963, which freed that aircraft to use smaller airports with no ground facilities.

After its maker merged with a larger American rival in 1997, the MD-95 airliner was renamed as which model?

The Boeing 717 traces back to a 1983 study called the DC-9-90, and it was aimed at the market for 100-seat airliners.

The nose cone of a typical airliner is a shell built to protect which piece of equipment?

Weather radar scans for storms from behind the nose cone, a radome made of material that radio waves can pass straight through.

Airliners with engines on the rear fuselage, such as the MD-80, usually mount the horizontal tailplane where?

On top of the fin, the tailplane stays clear of the jet exhaust, though the layout can leave an aircraft prone to a deep stall when the wings blank the airflow over it.

The company behind the 747 and 787 airliners was founded in 1916 in which Pacific Northwest city?

Seattle remained the corporate headquarters until 2001, when the company moved its head office to Chicago.

Airbus completes final assembly of many of its narrow-body jets at Finkenwerder, a plant in which German city?

Hamburg's plant comes with its own private airport, used only by the planemaker for test, freight and delivery flights.

Which British jetliner made the first automatic landing on a scheduled passenger flight in 1965?

Trident carried an automatic landing system developed with Smiths Aircraft Instruments, with triplicated components so that any failed one could be outvoted.

Which German firm built the F 13 of 1919, the world's first all-metal transport aircraft?

Junkers gave the aircraft an enclosed cabin for four passengers, although its two crew sat out in the open.

The 307 Stratoliner of 1940 was the first airliner in service with which feature?

A pressurised cabin, together with supercharged engines, lifted the Stratoliner over rough air that earlier airliners had to fly through.