230 Fun Facts About Aviation

Which Renaissance artist sketched a helicopter-like 'aerial screw' flying machine in the 1480s?

Leonardo da Vinci drew it in Milan, where he was designing military machines for the Milanese court; men turning its linen screw could never have supplied the power to lift a full-size version.

Which airliner is the only full-length double-deck jet ever built?

The Airbus A380 seats 525 in a typical layout, but airlines came to prefer smaller, more efficient twin-engined jets, and Airbus ended production in 2021 without recovering its development costs.

Of the four fundamental forces of flight, which acts opposite to thrust, balancing it in steady level flight?

Drag opposes thrust, and in steady level flight the two balance; cutting it is why most modern aircraft fold their landing gear away after takeoff.

Which airport was the world's busiest by passenger traffic in 2024?

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta has been the world's busiest passenger airport every year since 1998 except 2020, when pandemic travel limits briefly knocked it off the top; it is Delta Air Lines' main hub.

Who was the first woman to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean?

Amelia Earhart was bound for Paris in May 1932, but ice, strong winds and mechanical trouble forced her down after about 15 hours in a farm field in Northern Ireland.

Which hinged surfaces near the wingtips move in opposite directions to control an aircraft's roll?

Ailerons work as a pair: when one tilts up the other tilts down, so one wing loses lift while the other gains it and the aircraft banks.

Besides Newton's laws, which principle tying fast airflow to low pressure is used to explain lift?

Bernoulli's Principle links faster flow to lower pressure, but the popular 'equal transit time' story is false: air passing over a lifting wing reaches the back sooner than the air beneath.

Which engineer designed the first successful single-main-rotor helicopter with a tail rotor for anti-torque?

Igor Sikorsky was his own test pilot: he lifted the VS-300 off on tethers in September 1939 and flew it free in May 1940, and most rotorcraft since have copied its one-main-rotor, one-tail-rotor layout.

Which experimental German aircraft was the first in the world to fly on turbojet power, in August 1939?

The Heinkel He 178 was built as a private venture, without official backing; Erich Warsitz flew it on 27 August 1939, only days before the Second World War began.

Which test pilot first officially exceeded the speed of sound in level flight, on 14 October 1947?

Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 past Mach 1 with two ribs broken in a riding fall, an injury he kept quiet; a sawn-off broom handle let him lever the hatch shut.

Which US state stamps 'First in Flight' on its licence plates to mark the Wright brothers' 1903 flights?

North Carolina claims the flights, made at Kitty Hawk on its Outer Banks, while Ohio, where the brothers designed and built the machine, answers with the nickname 'Birthplace of Aviation'.

Which two countries jointly built Concorde?

Britain and France argued even over the spelling: the British wrote 'Concord' until minister Tony Benn restored the final 'e', saying it stood for Excellence, England, Europe and Entente.

What colour are aircraft 'black boxes' actually painted?

Bright orange paint and reflective tape make flight recorders easier to find in wreckage or under water, so the 'black box' is black in name only.

Which country, then the only major helium producer, banned its export, leaving the Hindenburg to fly on hydrogen?

The United States kept its scarce helium at home for its own airships, so the Hindenburg, designed to fly on the non-flammable gas, was filled with hydrogen instead and burned in 1937.

The Wright Flyer's first flight on December 17, 1903 lasted how long?

Orville Wright's first flight lasted 12 seconds, long enough for John Daniels of the nearby lifesaving station, who had never seen a camera before, to squeeze the bulb and catch it in one famous photograph.

Before building airplanes, the Wright brothers ran what kind of business in Dayton, Ohio?

A printing and bicycle shop gave the brothers their mechanical skills, and their belief that an unstable machine could be balanced with practice came from riding and repairing bikes.

How did the Wrights decide who would attempt the first powered flight, on December 14, 1903?

By coin toss, Wilbur got the first try; he climbed too steeply, stalled after about three seconds and damaged the Flyer, so Orville got the famous flight three days later.

Which flight instrument uses air pressure to show a pilot the aircraft's height above sea level?

The altimeter is really a barometer, so pilots reset it to the local air pressure before landing; high up, every crew dials in the same standard setting so that all aircraft share one reference.

Which control surface, mounted on the tail fin, controls an aircraft's yaw?

The rudder, worked by the pilot's foot pedals, is not the main control for turning an aircraft, unlike a ship's: turns come from banking, and it mostly keeps the nose lined up.

On commercial flights, cabin pressure is kept equivalent to an altitude no higher than what?

8,000 feet is a compromise: holding a lower cabin altitude at cruising height means a stronger, heavier airframe. Newer jets such as the Boeing 787 manage about 6,000 feet.

Which airliner, the first commercial jet, was grounded in 1954 after metal-fatigue crashes?

The de Havilland Comet, in service from 1952, was grounded in 1954 after two broke up in flight; fatigue cracks had started at the corners of square cut-outs in the pressurised fuselage.

Which Pan Am chief's demands produced the Boeing 747?

Juan Trippe wanted seat costs cut by about 30 percent; his airline ordered 25 of the new jets in April 1966, a project so large that Boeing's managers were said to have bet the company on it.

Why does the Boeing 747 have its famous hump?

So the cockpit sits above a nose cargo door: Boeing expected supersonic jets to take over passenger travel, so the 747 was shaped to convert easily into a front-loading freighter.

Boeing assembled the 747 in which Washington city, in the world's largest building by volume?

Everett's plant was built for the 747 in 1967, and time was so short that the jet's full-scale mock-up went up before the factory roof above it was finished.

Which musician flew on Concorde to perform at both the British and American Live Aid concerts on one day in 1985?

Phil Collins played Wembley, took a helicopter to the airport, crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and reached the Philadelphia stadium by a second helicopter in time to play again.

Concorde's droop nose was there for what reason?

Landing visibility: Concorde's delta wing forced a steep nose-up approach, so the long nose hinged down to let the pilots see the runway, then rose again for streamlining at speed.

Which Airbus family overtook the Boeing 737 in 2019 to become the most-ordered airliner in history?

The Airbus A320 family entered service in 1988, twenty years after the 737, yet passed it in total orders in October 2019 and in total deliveries in September 2025.

Which European airline was the launch customer for the Boeing 737 in February 1965?

Lufthansa's design talks with Boeing pushed the planned 737 up to 100 seats; the first one entered service with the airline in February 1968.

The Boeing 787 was the first airliner to have an airframe made mainly from what?

Composite materials make up about half the 787 by weight; its body is built from one-piece barrel sections rather than aluminium sheets joined by a great many fasteners.

The Antonov An-225 Mriya, the heaviest aircraft ever built, was originally designed to carry what?

The An-225 was built in 1988 to carry the Buran space shuttle and Energia rocket parts on its back; the only one completed was destroyed at Hostomel during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Howard Hughes's 'Spruce Goose' was mostly made of which wood?

Wartime aluminium restrictions forced the wooden build; it flew exactly once, on November 2, 1947, and Hughes hated the nickname.

How many times did the Spruce Goose fly?

Once: during taxi tests off Long Beach in November 1947, Hughes himself lifted it off for about a mile at 70 feet, in a break from Senate hearings into the money spent on it.

Strictly speaking, what does the designation 'Air Force One' refer to?

Any USAF aircraft carrying the president takes the call sign, adopted after a 1953 scare in which Eisenhower's plane and an airliner with the same flight number crossed paths.

Which designer created the blue-and-white Air Force One livery introduced in 1962?

Raymond Loewy complained that the old presidential jet's orange nose looked garish and offered his services free; Kennedy picked one of his sketches and asked for it to be redone in blue.

Which Australian scientist conceived the flight recorder in 1953?

David Warren was helping to investigate a jetliner crash when a pocket recorder he had seen at a trade fair suggested the idea: a device that survives to tell investigators what happened.

Which RAF officer patented his turbojet engine design in January 1930?

Frank Whittle was a 22-year-old pilot officer when he filed the patent; in 1935 he let it lapse because he could not spare the £5 renewal fee, shortly before backers helped him found Power Jets.

What are contrails made of?

Ice crystals: water vapour in the exhaust freezes almost instantly in the cold air at cruising altitude.

On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River after hitting what?

A flock of Canada geese knocked out both engines minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia; with no runway in reach, the crew glided down onto the river and all 155 people aboard survived.

Safety rules require a fully loaded airliner be evacuated in how long, even with half the exits blocked?

90 seconds is the limit, with half the exits blocked and the cabin dark; in one 2006 trial, 873 volunteers and crew got out of a superjumbo in 78 seconds.

Which four-seat light aircraft, first delivered in 1956, has been built more than any other?

A Cessna 172 Skyhawk once stayed aloft for almost 65 days: in 1958-59 two pilots circled over the desert Southwest, taking on fuel from a truck driving along beneath them.

What does the two-digit number painted at the end of an airport runway indicate?

Its compass heading, minus the last digit: runway 27 points west, at 270 degrees. Because magnetic north drifts, airports sometimes renumber, as Fairbanks did in 2009 when 1L-19R became 2L-20R.

Which company built the first gyroscopic autopilot for aircraft, in 1912?

Sperry's autopilot got a showman's debut at a 1914 air-safety contest: Lawrence Sperry, the founder's son, flew past the crowd with his hands held clear of the controls.

Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while attempting what?

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan had covered about 22,000 miles of their flight around the world, with 7,000 still to go, when they failed to find tiny Howland Island on July 2, 1937.

What colour is the navigation light on an aircraft's right wingtip?

Green marks the right wingtip and red the left, the same convention ships use, so a pilot who sees both colours side by side at night knows the other aircraft is pointing straight at them.

Before building airplanes, William Boeing made his fortune in which industry?

Lumber: he left Yale in 1903 to go into the timber business in Washington state, and later prospered by shipping wood to the East Coast through the newly opened Panama Canal.

A 1934 law separating plane makers from air transport split Boeing's holding company and created which airline?

United Airlines emerged when the 1934 Air Mail Act split United Aircraft and Transport into three firms; William Boeing sold his shares and left the company that kept his name.

Which rival planemaker did Boeing absorb on August 1, 1997?

McDonnell Douglas lost its name but not its influence: its last chief executive, Harry Stonecipher, became president of the merged company and later Boeing's chief executive.

Where did Boeing move its corporate headquarters in 2022?

Boeing announced in May 2022 that its headquarters would move from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, close to the Pentagon and its defense customers; it had left Seattle for Chicago in 2001.

Boeing's 1960 purchase of Vertol Aircraft Corporation took it into which line of business?

Helicopters were Vertol's whole business: it had been Piasecki Helicopter until 1956, when founder Frank Piasecki was ousted, and it was the biggest independent maker when Boeing bought it.

Test pilot Tex Johnston famously did what with the 707 prototype over Lake Washington in 1955?

Tex Johnston performed a barrel roll over the Seafair boat races with airline chiefs watching; asked by Boeing's president what he thought he was doing, he replied, 'I was selling airplanes.'

Which engine maker's JT3 turbojets powered the first Boeing 707s?

Pratt & Whitney's JT3C was the civil twin of the J57, already built by the thousand for Air Force jets and very reliable, which is why both Boeing and Douglas chose it for their first jetliners.

Who led the design team for the 747, after leaving the 737 program in 1965?

Joe Sutter's team dropped the full double-decker first sketched for the 747, worried about evacuation routes and cargo space, and chose a single extra-wide main deck instead.

The name 'Flying Fortress' for the B-17 was coined by whom?

Seattle Times reporter Richard Williams, seeing the machine guns bristling from the prototype in July 1935, wrote '15-ton flying fortress' in a photo caption; Boeing quickly trademarked the name.

Why did Boeing's Model 299 lose the 1935 Army bomber contract despite outperforming its rivals?

It crashed during the evaluation because the crew took off with the control gust locks still engaged; the lesson became the written pre-flight checklist that pilots have used ever since.

In 2018 Boeing opened its first European factory in which city?

Sheffield, better known for steel, was a natural choice: Boeing already ran a research partnership there with the city's university, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

Spirit AeroSystems was created in 2005 when Boeing spun off its division in which city?

Wichita, Kansas was home to the Boeing division sold to an investment firm in 2005 as Spirit AeroSystems, a maker of 737 fuselages; in 2024 Boeing agreed to pay $4.7 billion to buy it back.

The number 72 in the ATR 72's name comes from what?

Its typical seating capacity, about 72, gives the ATR 72 its name; the plane is a stretched version of the earlier ATR 42, which was named the same way.

Which national airline, whose home state dissolved at the end of 1991, was then broken up into hundreds of regional carriers?

Aeroflot, the Soviet state airline, was split into several hundred regional carriers, many flying a single plane and nicknamed 'Babyflots'; the international routes kept the Aeroflot name.

What is the British English term for a jet engine's afterburner?

British engineers call the afterburner 'reheat', because it reheats the turbine exhaust by burning extra fuel; engines are said to run 'wet' with reheat and 'dry' without.

In an emergency, who retains final authority for an aircraft's safe operation?

The pilot in command has the last word: in an emergency the rules let the captain deviate from any other rule, a power that mirrors a ship's captain's at sea.

Airbus is run from Toulouse, but in which country is its headquarters legally registered?

The Netherlands: the group was incorporated there in 2000, when aerospace firms from three countries merged to form it, and its registered office is in the city of Leiden.

France founded Airbus Industrie in 1970 with which other country?

West Germany's Deutsche Airbus and France's Aérospatiale set Airbus up as a 'groupement d'intérêt économique', a French legal form that let the partners pool their work while staying independent companies.

Which aircraft was the world's first twin-engine, wide-body airliner?

The Airbus A300 sold so slowly that unsold jets piled up at the factory in the mid-1970s; the turnaround came when a US airline was lent four for a six-month trial and then ordered 23.

Which country's government withdrew from the A300 airliner project in April 1969?

The United Kingdom's government pulled out, but Hawker Siddeley stayed in as a private partner, putting up £35 million of its own money to design and build the A300's wings.

The Airbus A340 quadjet was launched together with which twin-engined sibling in June 1987?

The A330 and A340 are one design with two or four engines: Airbus built both because airlines in North America wanted a twin while Asian carriers wanted four engines.

Which two airlines were launch customers for the Airbus A340 in March 1993?

Lufthansa and Air France began A340 flights in March 1993, but big twin-engined jets proved cheaper to run, and Airbus ended production in 2011 after delivering 377.

Which engine exclusively powers the Airbus A350?

The Rolls-Royce Trent XWB takes its name from the jet's 'extra wide body', the clean-sheet design Airbus switched to in 2006 when its first, less ambitious proposal failed to win enough support.

Since the A320 of 1988, Airbus pilots have steered with what in place of a control yoke?

A side-stick sits by each pilot's outer hand and sends electronic signals to the flight computers; unlike linked yokes, the two sticks move independently, so neither pilot feels the other's inputs.

What aging aircraft did the Airbus Beluga replace for hauling wings and fuselages?

Super Guppies were converted Boeing Stratocruisers, which prompted the old joke that every Airbus was delivered on the wings of a Boeing; the purpose-built Beluga took over from 1995.

Under which 1944 treaty must all civil aircraft be registered with a national authority?

The Chicago Convention, signed by 52 states in December 1944 while the war was still being fought, also created ICAO; under it an aircraft can be registered in only one country at a time.

What shape do supersonic airfoils tend toward compared with subsonic ones?

Supersonic airfoils are slimmer and sharp-edged, because a rounded nose would throw up a strong bow shock; the F-104 Starfighter's wing edges were so thin that ground crews fitted guards to them.

Which company, founded in 1909, is regarded as the world's first passenger airline?

DELAG, founded in Frankfurt in November 1909, had carried 34,028 passengers on 1,588 flights by July 1914, a month before the First World War brought its passenger service to a stop.

Which airline alliance, the first of today's big three, was founded by five carriers in May 1997?

Star Alliance's logo has five points, one for each founding airline; rivals answered quickly, with Oneworld launching in 1999 and SkyTeam in 2000.

Alberto Santos-Dumont won the Deutsch prize in 1901 by flying his airship around what?

The Eiffel Tower was rounded inside the half-hour limit, but landing took a minute more, so the judges at first refused the prize; when they relented, he gave the money to his crew and the city's poor.

Which country hails Alberto Santos-Dumont as the father of aviation?

Brazil holds that Santos-Dumont, not the Wrights, first showed a practical aeroplane: his 14-bis took off near Paris in 1906 under its own power before official observers, with no launch rail to help.

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 in 1988 lost part of its fuselage roof; on which island did it land safely?

The Boeing 737 made an emergency landing at Kahului Airport on Maui on 28 April 1988; the only fatality was flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing, swept out when the roof tore away.

Which European airport opened in 1916 on the bed of a drained lake?

Amsterdam Schiphol began as a military airfield on the floor of the Haarlemmermeer, a lake pumped dry by 1852, so its runways lie below sea level; scheduled civil flights began there in 1920.

Which engineer invented the autogiro, first flying one in January 1923?

Juan de la Cierva began in 1919 looking for an aircraft that could not stall, and found the answer in a free-spinning, unpowered rotor; his fourth design finally flew at Getafe, Spain, in January 1923.

Which aircraft, built since 1947, has had a longer continuous production run than any other?

The Beechcraft Bonanza has been built in V-tail and straight-tail forms since 1947; an early one was the plane that crashed in 1959 with Buddy Holly aboard, on 'the day the music died'.

What did Berliners call the Berlin Airlift planes that dropped sweets to children?

Raisin bombers, or Rosinenbomber, earned the name after pilot Gail Halvorsen gave two sticks of gum to children at the airfield fence, then began dropping candy on tiny parachutes.

Where did Bessie Coleman have to go to attend flight school?

Bessie Coleman took French classes in Chicago and sailed for France in 1920 because no American flight school would train a Black woman; she earned her licence there in June 1921.

Which flight demonstration squadron is the second-oldest formal aerobatic team in the world?

The Blue Angels were created in 1946 on the orders of Admiral Chester Nimitz to keep the public behind naval aviation after the war; only one team in Europe has older roots.

Boeing's cancelled 2707 jet gave which sports team its name?

The Seattle SuperSonics were named in 1967 as a nod to the supersonic airliner Boeing had just won a contract to build; the jet was cancelled in 1971, but the team kept the name until it moved away in 2008.

Which airliner is often credited with beginning the Jet Age, though it wasn't the first jet in service?

The 707 carried so many passengers so far that it dominated air travel through the 1960s, and its number began the 7x7 naming series Boeing has used ever since.

Which was the only trijet aircraft ever produced by Boeing?

The 727 had a stairway under its tail that hijacker D. B. Cooper used to bail out with his ransom in 1971; afterwards the jets were fitted with a latch, the 'Cooper vane', to keep the stairs shut in flight.

Which airline placed the first Boeing 757 into commercial service in January 1983?

Eastern Air Lines, then run by former astronaut Frank Borman, placed a launch order for the 757 in 1978; the airline itself collapsed in 1991, while the jet stayed in production until 2004.

The Boeing 767 was Boeing's first wide-body designed to fly without which crew member?

The flight engineer gave way to computers and screens that let the two pilots watch the aircraft's systems themselves; in 1981 a US presidential task force ruled a crew of two safe for wide-body jets.

Which Boeing airliner was the first designed entirely on computer, without paper drawings?

The 777 was assembled virtually in 3-D CATIA software so that clashing parts showed up on screen; a physical nose section built to check the results matched so well that further mock-ups were cancelled.

Which airline's flights use the radio call sign 'Speedbird'?

British Airways inherited the name from a 1932 bird emblem drawn for its ancestor Imperial Airways; the logo itself was dropped after 52 years, but the call sign lives on.

Which US bomber is powered by eight jet engines?

The B-52 Stratofortress has outlasted the faster B-58 built after it, and upgraded B-52s are expected to keep flying into the 2050s, a century after the first flight.

Which bomber did the B-52 replace for Cold War nuclear deterrence?

The Convair B-36 Peacemaker flew on six propellers and four jets, 'six turning and four burning', but faced jet fighters from the outset and was only ever a stopgap until all-jet bombers arrived.

Boeing's 747 Large Cargo Freighter was built to ferry major sections of which airliner?

The 787 Dreamliner's wings are built in Japan; flying them to the assembly line in a 'Dreamlifter' cut the journey from around 30 days to just over eight hours.

Bombardier acquired which state-owned Canadian planemaker in 1986?

Canadair was Bombardier's way into aviation: the company began in 1942 selling snowmobiles, and bought the loss-making state planemaker from the Canadian government for C$120 million.

Clyde Cessna co-founded Travel Air with Lloyd Stearman and which later rival?

Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman built Travel Air into a leading planemaker, but Cessna walked out after two years in a dispute over whether to build monoplanes, his passion, or biplanes.

The Cessna Citation business jets are named after what?

A racehorse: Citation won the American Triple Crown, but the first jet was so slow beside its rivals that Learjet salesmen called it the 'Nearjet' and others the 'Slowtation'.

Which aircraft is nicknamed 'the plane with the parachute'?

Every Cirrus SR22 carries a parachute big enough to lower the whole aircraft; the first time one was used in an emergency, over Texas in 2002, the pilot was unhurt and the plane was repaired and flew again.

The 9 in Comac's C919 designation refers to what in Chinese culture?

Longevity is what 9 symbolises in Chinese culture; the 19 marks about 190 seats, and the C stands for China and Comac while lining up neatly after A for Airbus and B for Boeing.

Which airline received the first production Comac C919 in December 2022?

China Eastern took the first C919 in Shanghai in December 2022 and flew its first passengers in May 2023; China's home-built airliner still relies on Western-made CFM LEAP engines.

What does the Q stand for in the Dash 8 'Q Series' turboprops?

The Q stands for Quiet: from 1996-97 Bombardier fitted Dash 8s with an active noise and vibration suppression system and rebranded them the Q Series.

Which airport was the world's busiest by international passenger traffic in 2024?

Dubai International handled a record 92.3 million passengers in 2024; it owes much of that traffic to Emirates, which runs its long-haul network through the airport as its hub.

During EAA AirVenture, which airport hosts the world's busiest control tower?

Wittman Regional, Oshkosh, takes in more than 10,000 aircraft for the week-long fly-in each July; controllers land several at once on one runway by telling each pilot which coloured dot to touch down on.

With 26 aerial victories, who was the top American flying ace of World War I?

Eddie Rickenbacker, a pre-war racing driver, scored 26 victories with the 94th Aero Squadron in 1918 and later ran Eastern Air Lines for more than two decades.

Embraer is headquartered in which Brazilian city?

Embraer was founded in 1969 in São José dos Campos, in São Paulo state, beside the CTA aerospace research centre and the ITA engineering institute, and builds its E-Jets there.

Which airline provided Emirates with its first two aircraft in 1985?

Pakistan International Airlines provided Emirates with its first two aircraft and trained its first cabin crew in Karachi; the new airline started in 1985 with $10 million and a rule that it take no government subsidy.

The FAA was created in 1958 to replace which agency?

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 transferred the Civil Aeronautics Administration's functions to the new Federal Aviation Agency, renamed an Administration when it joined the Department of Transportation in 1967.

Where on a wing are flaps usually mounted?

The trailing edges carry the flaps, which let a wing make more lift at low speed so an airliner can land slower and on a shorter runway; they also add drag, so pilots retract them for cruise.

The world's first flight attendant, Heinrich Kubis, served aboard what in 1912?

Kubis looked after passengers on the Zeppelin LZ 10 Schwaben from March 1912, and was later chief steward of the Hindenburg, surviving its 1937 crash.

Besides the flight data recorder, what is an airliner's second black box?

The cockpit voice recorder keeps a rolling loop of at least two hours, and investigators mine it for more than speech: engine noise, stall warnings and stray clicks help them rebuild a crash timeline.

Fly-by-wire replaces manual flight controls with what?

Fly-by-wire swaps control cables and pulleys for an electronic interface: computers turn the pilot's inputs into actuator commands; Concorde used an analogue version, and the first airliner with digital fly-by-wire followed in 1988.

Seeking a lighter undercarriage for his gliders, Sir George Cayley came up with what in 1808?

The wire wheel: Cayley proposed tension-spoked wheels in 1808 to lighten his gliders' undercarriage but never patented them; in 1799 he had already set out the concept of the fixed-wing aeroplane.

The 'Gimli Glider' Boeing 767 ran out of fuel partly because of confusion between which units?

Pounds and kilograms: the crew worked out the fuel load with the pounds figure on a jet that measured in kilograms, so it left with about half what it needed and glided down to a former air base at Gimli.

The Gossamer Albatross crossed the English Channel in 1979 powered by what?

Human pedalling: amateur cyclist Bryan Allen pedalled the Gossamer Albatross from England to France in 2 hours 49 minutes on 12 June 1979, flying about five feet above the sea, to win the £100,000 Kremer prize.

Gulfstream business jets began as a turboprop built by which military-aircraft maker?

Grumman, maker of the Navy's Hellcat and later the F-14, built the turboprop Gulfstream I from 1958 as a 12-seat corporate aircraft; the line was sold off in 1978 and became Gulfstream Aerospace.

The Hawker Siddeley Harrier was the first operational attack aircraft with which capability?

Vertical/short takeoff and landing came from four swivelling nozzles on its single Pegasus engine; in the 1982 Falklands War RAF Harriers flew from the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes.

Heathrow was known by what name until 1966?

London Airport opened for civil use in 1946 and was renamed Heathrow in 1966 under the new British Airports Authority; the site had begun in 1930 as planemaker Richard Fairey's private field for testing aircraft.

Which 1936 aircraft is regarded as the first practical, fully controllable helicopter?

The Focke-Wulf Fw 61, with twin side-by-side rotors, made its first free flight on 26 June 1936; in 1938 test pilot Hanna Reitsch flew it indoors, inside Berlin's Deutschlandhalle arena.

The Hindenburg caught fire while docking at which naval air station in 1937?

Lakehurst, New Jersey: the Hindenburg burned while mooring at the naval air station on 6 May 1937, killing 35 on board and one ground crewman, and the disaster brought the age of the passenger airship to an end.

Where are the HondaJet's engines unusually mounted?

The HondaJet carries its two HF120 engines on pylons above the wing, a layout that frees cabin space and cuts drag; it first flew in December 2003 and was certified in December 2015.

Which fire-resistant fabric, also worn by racing drivers, forms a hot air balloon's mouth beside the burner?

Nomex, a fibre that will not melt or drip, lines the mouth because that part takes the most heat from the burner flame, while the rest of the envelope is usually ripstop nylon or polyester.

Which city's airport code, MCO, comes from McCoy Air Force Base?

Orlando: its airport grew out of McCoy Air Force Base, a bomber base renamed in memory of Colonel Michael McCoy after he died in a B-47 crash, and it kept the MCO code when the base closed in 1975.

In Greek myth, who built the wings that Icarus flew with?

Daedalus, the craftsman imprisoned on Crete by King Minos, built the wings from feathers, thread and beeswax to escape with his son Icarus, who flew too close to the sun.

In an ILS approach, which signal provides horizontal guidance to the runway?

The localizer, broadcasting on 108 to 112 MHz, lines an aircraft up with the runway centreline; flown from the opposite end on a 'back course', a basic needle reads in reverse, so pilots must steer away from it.

In the spelling alphabet pilots use on the radio, which word stands for the letter F?

Foxtrot: the alphabet settled in 1956 replaced wartime sets such as Able Baker, with words picked to stay clear over a crackling radio for speakers of English, French and Spanish.

The UN's civil aviation agency, ICAO, is headquartered in which city?

Montreal has been ICAO's home since 1947; when Qatar offered in 2013 to build the agency a new headquarters in Doha, Canada's governments lobbied to keep it and Qatar withdrew the bid within weeks.

The thermodynamic cycle used by air-breathing jet engines is named after whom?

Jet engines run on the Brayton cycle, named for American engineer George Brayton, who patented a constant-pressure engine in 1872: air is compressed, heated by burning fuel, and expanded through a turbine.

Most travellers find jet lag harder to adjust to when flying in which direction?

East is harder for most travellers because it shortens the day and forces the body clock to advance; that clock naturally runs slightly longer than 24 hours, so stretching a day comes more easily than cutting one short.

Jet streams generally flow in which direction around the globe?

Jet streams blow from west to east, driven by the Earth's rotation and the temperature contrast between polar and tropical air; the polar jet sits near 30,000 feet and often runs over 100 mph.

New York's JFK Airport borders which body of water?

Jamaica Bay borders JFK on the southern edge of Queens; the airport opened in 1948 as New York International, commonly called Idlewild, and was renamed for President Kennedy after his assassination in 1963.

Which is the oldest operating airline still using its original name?

KLM, founded on 7 October 1919, is the oldest airline to operate continuously under its original name; it merged with Air France in 2004 but kept its own brand.

Learjet founder Bill Lear also led the group that created which in-car music format?

The 8-track tape: Lear's company led the consortium behind the Stereo 8 cartridge in the mid-1960s, alongside Ford, General Motors and RCA; he had made his name decades earlier with car radios.

The Lockheed Constellation was the first airliner family in widespread use with what feature?

A pressurized cabin let the Constellation cruise above most bad weather, which made long flights smoother and safer; its triple tail kept it low enough to fit existing hangars.

Which airliner was the third wide-body to enter service, after the 747 and DC-10?

The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar entered service in 1972, delayed because its Rolls-Royce RB211 engine cost so much to develop that Rolls-Royce went into receivership in 1971 and had to be nationalised.

The F-22 Raptor was developed to replace which US Air Force fighter?

The F-22 took over the F-15 Eagle's air-superiority role from 2005; the Air Force once planned 750, but cost and politics cut the run to 195 aircraft, test jets included.

The Lockheed U-2 spy plane carries what nickname?

The U-2, nicknamed the Dragon Lady, has flown reconnaissance since the 1950s at above 70,000 feet, where its pilots wear full pressure suits; it outlasted the far faster SR-71, which was retired in the 1990s.

The flying-saucer-like Theme Building is a landmark of which airport?

LAX was first planned around an enormous glass dome linking every terminal; the plan was scaled back, the dome was never built, and the smaller Theme Building of 1961 rose at the airport's centre instead.

The Mach number is named after a physicist from which country?

Austria's Ernst Mach, the physicist and philosopher who published the first photographs of a bullet's supersonic shock waves in 1887, gives his name to the ratio of an object's speed to the local speed of sound.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in 2014 while flying to which city?

Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on 8 March 2014 and vanished with 239 people aboard; the Boeing 777-200ER is believed to have ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

How many air combat victories was the Red Baron officially credited with?

Manfred von Richthofen was officially credited with 80 victories, the most of any First World War pilot; he began the war as a cavalry officer before transferring to the Air Service in 1915.

The Red Baron's fighter wing was nicknamed what because of its brightly coloured aircraft?

Jagdgeschwader 1, the 'Flying Circus', earned the name from its brightly painted aircraft and its habit of moving between fronts by rail and setting up in tents like a travelling show.

Which airline introduced the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 into service in August 1971?

American Airlines flew the first DC-10 service on 5 August 1971; the early jets had a flawed cargo-door design that caused several accidents, among them the loss of a Turkish Airlines DC-10 in 1974.

What was the Montgolfier family's trade in their hometown of Annonay?

The Montgolfiers ran a paper manufacturing business in Annonay, and their first balloons were made of paper-lined sackcloth; their balloon carried the first crewed flight in November 1783.

Which sci-fi model is part of the National Air and Space Museum's collection?

The starship Enterprise, the 11-foot Star Trek filming model, was donated by Paramount in 1974; after a restoration completed in 2016 it went on show in the Milestones of Flight hall, among real pioneering aircraft.

Which American fighter was designed in 1940 for Britain instead of licence-built P-40s?

The P-51 Mustang: asked by Britain to build P-40s under licence, North American offered a new design instead and had the prototype airframe ready in 102 days; the British gave it the name Mustang.

Which company, whose founder championed flying wings in the 1940s, built the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber?

Northrop built the B-2; founder Jack Northrop, whose own flying-wing bombers never reached service, was cleared to see a model of the secret design shortly before he died in 1981.

Which airport has the most runways in the world, with eight?

Chicago O'Hare has eight runways, six parallel east-west plus two diagonals, after a 2021 expansion; its ORD code comes from the site's old name, Orchard Field.

Which honour did naval aviator Butch O'Hare, namesake of an Illinois airport, receive?

Butch O'Hare received the Medal of Honor for single-handedly attacking nine Japanese bombers threatening the carrier Lexington on 20 February 1942, becoming the Navy's first ace of the war; Chicago's airport was renamed for him in 1949.

Which German pioneer, known as the 'flying man', made the first well-documented glider flights?

Otto Lilienthal made some 2,000 documented glides from 1891, his photographs inspiring the Wrights; he died in August 1896 after his glider stalled and fell about 15 metres near Berlin.

Pan Am's globe logo was nicknamed what?

The Blue Meatball, Pan Am's blue globe, outlived the airline: after the 1991 collapse a New England railroad company bought the name and logo in 1998 and adopted them as its own.

Pan Am's original 1927 route connected Key West with which city?

Pan Am's first scheduled flight carried mail from Key West to Havana on 28 October 1927 in a Fokker F.VII, with passengers following in January 1928.

The Paris Air Show is held at which airport?

Le Bourget, north-east of Paris, has hosted the show since 1953; first held in 1909, it runs in odd-numbered years, and in 1973 a Soviet Tu-144 supersonic airliner crashed there during its display.

The Piper J-3 Cub served in World War II under what military name?

The L-4 Grasshopper spotted for artillery and carried messages; some pilots strapped on bazookas, and Charles 'Bazooka Charlie' Carpenter used his to knock out German armoured vehicles.

What does the name Qantas stand for?

Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services was the 1920 name of an airline meant to open up Australia's north; yet its first regular service, in 1922, linked two outback towns that were both in Queensland.

In which 1988 film does a character insist on flying only Qantas?

Rain Man: Raymond says Qantas never crashed, a scene many airlines cut from their in-flight versions in 1989; Qantas has indeed never lost a jet airliner, though it had fatal accidents up to 1951.

In the acronym RADAR, what does the final R stand for?

Ranging: radar is short for radio detection and ranging, timing a radio echo to measure distance; Britain's wartime name was RDF, chosen as a cover because it suggested ordinary radio direction finding.

The Red Arrows' motto Éclat is a French word meaning what?

Brilliance is the usual rendering of Éclat; the Red Arrows were formed in late 1964 as one official RAF team, replacing several unofficial display teams that individual commands had been running.

The Red Arrows initially flew which aircraft type?

The Red Arrows began with seven Folland Gnat trainers inherited from the Yellowjacks team, chosen because they were cheaper to run than front-line fighters, and flew them until switching to the Hawk in late 1979.

Which aircraft was the first to fly around the world without stopping or refuelling?

The Rutan Voyager took just over nine days in December 1986; it left so heavy with fuel that its wingtips scraped the runway on takeoff, and it landed with only about 1.5 percent of that fuel left.

Which airline's boss floated a £1 toilet charge in 2009?

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary told the BBC that a coin slot on the toilet door was being looked at, then admitted about a week later that the idea was just a cheap publicity stunt.

Which airline took delivery of the first Airbus A380 and flew its first passenger service in October 2007?

Singapore Airlines took the first A380 on 15 October 2007 and flew it to Sydney ten days later, with the seats sold in a charity online auction; one bidder paid $100,380.

The ultra-long Singapore-Newark non-stop route was originally flown with which aircraft?

The four-engined A340-500 flew Singapore to Newark from 2004, latterly with just 100 business-class seats, until the route was dropped in 2013; it returned in 2018 with the twin-engined A350-900ULR.

Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard earlier co-piloted the first balloon to do what?

Piccard and Brian Jones were the first to circle the world non-stop by balloon, riding jet streams from Switzerland to a landing in Egypt in just under 20 days in March 1999; their gondola went on display at the Smithsonian.

In 1973, sonic booms led the US to prohibit routine civil supersonic flight where?

The FAA's 1973 rule banned civil supersonic flight over US land because of sonic booms; NASA's low-boom X-59 demonstrator was built to show the rule could be loosened.

Southwest Airlines began flying between which three Texas cities?

Dallas, Houston and San Antonio formed the 'Texas Triangle' that Southwest began flying in June 1971, after rivals Braniff, Trans-Texas and Continental had tied the new airline up in court for three years.

Named for its backers' home city, Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis was built by Ryan Airlines where?

San Diego: Ryan Airlines designed and built the plane there in 60 days, and the proud city named its new airport Lindbergh Field the following year.

Lindbergh began his 1927 solo Atlantic flight from which Long Island airfield?

Lindbergh lifted off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island at 7:52 a.m. on 20 May 1927, barely clearing the telephone wires, and won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

Whatever its airspeed, a wing stalls when it exceeds its critical what?

Angle of attack: past roughly 15 degrees the airflow breaks away from the wing's upper surface and lift collapses; a stall has nothing to do with the engines stopping.

Which aircraft has the longest wingspan ever flown, at 385 feet?

Stratolaunch's Roc was given twin fuselages and a 385-foot wing to carry rockets aloft for air launch, and it now releases hypersonic test vehicles instead; it first flew in April 2019.

The 1950s French jetliner Caravelle carried its two engines where?

On the rear fuselage: the layout left the Caravelle's wing clean and cut the noise in its cabin, and after the jet entered service with SAS in 1959 the idea was taken up by the DC-9 and many later regional jets.

Who designed the Supermarine Spitfire?

R. J. Mitchell, Supermarine's chief designer, created the Spitfire, which first flew on 5 March 1936, and died of cancer the next year; Canadian aerodynamicist Beverley Shenstone shaped its elliptical wing.

The deadliest accident in aviation history was a 1977 collision on which island?

Tenerife: two Boeing 747s collided in fog on the runway at Los Rodeos on 27 March 1977, killing 583; since then controllers say the word 'takeoff' only when actually clearing a flight to go.

Which two airlines' 747s collided at Los Rodeos Airport in 1977?

KLM 4805 began its takeoff roll without clearance and struck Pan Am 1736 taxiing on the same runway; both 747s had been diverted to Los Rodeos after a bomb at Gran Canaria airport.

Which tycoon held a controlling interest in TWA by 1944?

Howard Hughes bought into TWA from 1939 and held a controlling stake by 1944, backing the Constellation and the airline's postwar expansion to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The Soviet Tu-144 first flew how long before Concorde?

Two months: the Tu-144 flew on 31 December 1968 and Concorde on 2 March 1969, yet the head start counted for little, as the Soviet jet's passenger service lasted only 55 flights before it was withdrawn in 1978.

Tu-144 passenger flights linked Moscow with which Kazakh city?

Almaty, then the Kazakh capital and called Alma-Ata, was the far end of the route: passenger flights from Moscow began in 1977 and were halted in 1978, after a newer Tu-144 crash-landed on a test flight.

In a turbofan, what term describes how much air skirts the core versus passing through it?

The bypass ratio compares air ducted around the core by the fan with air passing through it; modern airliner engines run ratios of 9:1 or more for fuel efficiency and low noise.

Which was the first turboprop-powered airliner to enter service, in 1953?

The Vickers Viscount entered service with BEA in April 1953 on four Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops; its cabin had far less vibration and noise than piston airliners, and unusually large windows.

What is the main purpose of the upturned winglets on an airliner's wingtips?

Winglets reduce drag by weakening the vortex that spills around each wingtip, a gain like extra wingspan without the width; a typical airliner burns 4 to 6 percent less fuel with them.

Which tailor died in 1912 testing a wearable parachute suit in a jump in Paris?

Franz Reichelt, an Austrian-born Paris tailor, jumped from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower on 4 February 1912 wearing his parachute suit; it failed to open and he died on impact.

What was the horsepower of the Wright Flyer's gasoline engine?

The Wrights' mechanic Charlie Taylor built the four-cylinder engine in six weeks; it produced about 12 horsepower and weighed 180 pounds, driving two pusher propellers through a chain drive.

What ended the Wright Flyer's flying career minutes after its fourth flight?

A gust of wind caught the Flyer on the ground after Wilbur's 852-foot flight, the longest of the day, and rolled it over; the damage ended the brothers' season, and the machine never flew again.

The Wright Flyer controlled roll using what technique?

Wing warping twisted the wingtips in opposite directions: lying prone, the pilot swung a hip cradle that pulled wires to warp the wings and turn the rudder together.

The distress call 'mayday' was coined in the early 1920s by a radio officer at which airport?

Croydon's senior radio officer, Frederick Mockford, is said to have picked 'mayday' because it sounds like the French m'aider, 'help me', as much of the airport's traffic flew to and from Paris.

Who made the first untethered human flight, in a Montgolfier balloon in November 1783?

Pilâtre de Rozier and the marquis d'Arlandes went up weeks after a sheep, a duck and a rooster had flown; the king had suggested sending convicts instead.

Louis Blériot's 1909 flight across the English Channel won a £1,000 prize put up by which British newspaper?

The Daily Mail's £1,000 made Blériot world-famous; he had funded his aviation work with profits from inventing the first practical car headlamp.

Which secretive Lockheed division developed the F-117 Nighthawk, the first operational stealth aircraft?

Skunk Works took its name from the 'Skonk Works' in the comic strip Li'l Abner, where a foul-smelling brew was made deep in the woods; the secretive division built the F-117, which the Air Force retired in 2008.

The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is the first production aircraft of which type?

The V-22 is a tiltrotor: its two proprotors swivel upward to take off and land like a helicopter and forward to cruise like a turboprop; it entered US Marine Corps service in 2007.

Which NASA engineer's 1970s research gave 'winglet' its modern meaning?

Richard Whitcomb at NASA Langley took up the wingtip idea after the 1973 oil crisis; flight tests of nine-foot winglets on an Air Force KC-135 tanker in 1979-80 bore out his wind-tunnel predictions.

What term do air traffic controllers use when assigning an aircraft a transponder code?

Squawk: 'squawk 7421' means dial that four-digit code into the transponder, and three codes are reserved for trouble: 7500 for hijacking, 7600 for radio failure and 7700 for an emergency.

Which unit of aircraft speed equals one nautical mile per hour?

The knot is one nautical mile, exactly 1,852 metres, per hour; pilots and sailors keep the unit because a nautical mile matches one minute of latitude, which makes distances easy to read off a chart.

The ground gunners now thought to have fired the shot that killed the Red Baron served which country?

Australia: Canadian pilot Roy Brown got the official credit, but the single bullet most likely came from Australian machine-gunners as Richthofen flew low over their lines; he was buried with full military honours.

Which US Airways captain glided a powerless airliner onto New York's Hudson River in 2009, saving all 155 aboard?

Chesley Sullenberger was a former Air Force fighter pilot who had flown airliners since 1980. With too little height to reach a runway, he and Jeffrey Skiles chose the river beside Midtown Manhattan.

Besides tango, which other dance lends its name to a letter in the radio spelling alphabet used by pilots?

Foxtrot stands for the letter F, though at airports in the United States it is sometimes clipped to plain 'Fox'. Tango covers the letter T.

Which future moonwalker flew the X-15 rocket plane seven times as a research pilot before becoming an astronaut?

Neil Armstrong took the X-15 above 207,000 feet in April 1962, the highest he went before his Gemini 8 spaceflight. On that flight the rocket plane ballooned back up during its descent.

Which Hollywood actor, a licensed pilot, owned a former Qantas jetliner and was the airline's goodwill ambassador?

John Travolta named the jet 'Jett Clipper Ella' in honour of his children. In 2017 he donated it to an aircraft restoration society near Wollongong, Australia.

Which heavy-metal band toured the world aboard Ed Force One, a Boeing airliner flown by its singer Bruce Dickinson?

Iron Maiden's frontman worked as a commercial pilot for Astraeus Airlines between tours. He learned to fly in Florida in the 1990s and went on to earn an airline transport pilot's licence.

On many airlines, why are the two pilots of a flight told to eat different meals from each other?

Food poisoning risk drove the rule, which many airlines adopted after a 1975 Japan Air Lines flight. Tainted omelettes sickened the passengers, and the pilots had by chance picked steak instead.

The Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American military pilots in the US armed forces, trained in which state?

Alabama was home to Moton Field, built with a $175,000 loan that Eleanor Roosevelt arranged through the Julius Rosenwald Fund. The airmen studied at the nearby Tuskegee Institute.

On an airliner's flight deck, which crew member traditionally occupies the right-hand seat beside the central throttles?

The first officer sits on the right because the captain takes the left, a seat that leaves the right hand free for the throttles and other controls on the central pedestal.

What does the radio word 'Roger', once a spelling alphabet's name for the letter R, tell the other station?

Message received is all it means, a habit inherited from telegraphers who tapped out an 'R' after getting a message. It never means yes, so a pilot who will obey an instruction says 'Wilco'.

In a US flight-school tradition, what does an instructor cut from a student pilot's clothing after a first solo?

The shirt tail goes because, before cockpit intercoms, an instructor seated behind could only get a student's attention by tugging on it. A pilot who can fly alone no longer needs one.

In pilot slang, a short flight to eat at another airport's restaurant is named after a hamburger costing how much?

$100 originally covered renting a light aircraft for the round trip plus the meal. By 2008 one flight instructor said such outings had become 'more like a $200 hamburger'.

Which navigation method, used by Lindbergh over the Atlantic, fixes position from heading, speed and elapsed time?

Dead reckoning was the natural choice aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, which carried only very basic instruments. Each new position is worked forward from the last known fix.

Which radio-alphabet code word do pilots worldwide use as their everyday name for UTC, the universal time standard?

Zulu is the radio word for Z, the letter that denotes the zero-hours time zone. In aviation 'Zulu time' is the universal standard, whatever the local clocks say.

In IMSAFE, the fitness checklist pilots run on themselves before flying, what does the letter A stand for?

Alcohol gets its own letter because US rules ground a pilot for any drinking in the previous 8 hours or a blood level of 0.04. The other letters cover illness, medication, stress, fatigue and emotion.

Which four-digit transponder code does a pilot dial to tell radar controllers of a general emergency on board?

7700 normally triggers an alarm at every radar control position. That is why pilots changing codes are taught to avoid passing through it by accident.

Which radio call, taken from the French for a breakdown, reports an urgent problem with no immediate danger to life?

Pan-pan asks for help without telling rescuers to drop everything, as a full distress call would. The word behind it is 'panne', used of a mechanical failure.

Which RAF fighter ace fought in the Battle of Britain despite having lost both legs in a 1931 flying accident?

Douglas Bader flew on a pair of artificial legs. Captured after baling out in 1941, he made so many escape attempts that he was sent to Colditz Castle.

Which nickname did German soldiers reportedly give the Soviet women pilots who bombed them from slow, outdated biplanes?

Night Witches would idle their engines near a target and glide in to release their bombs. The whoosh that remained was said to remind the troops below of broomsticks.

Which Luftwaffe pilot, nicknamed 'Bubi', became history's top-scoring fighter ace with 352 victories?

Erich Hartmann scored his 352nd and last victory on 8 May 1945, hours before the German surrender. All but seven of the aircraft he was credited with were Soviet.

During a takeoff roll, which V-speed marks the last point at which pilots can safely abandon the takeoff and stop?

V1 is the takeoff decision speed. Beyond it an aircraft may be unable to stop before the runway ends, so crews are trained to keep going even after an engine failure.

The word 'avionics', first recorded in 1949, blends 'aviation' with which other word?

Electronics is the other half. The blend covers the electronic systems carried aboard aircraft, from radios and radar to autopilots.

Flight decks whose analogue dials have given way to large digital screens are known as which kind of cockpit?

Glass cockpits swap rows of mechanical gauges, nicknamed 'steam gauges', for a few large screens that can be adjusted to show whatever flight information the crew needs.

Which transparent screen, first developed for military aircraft, puts flight data in a pilot's forward line of sight?

Head-up display is named for letting a pilot keep the head up and looking forward instead of angled down at the instruments. The idea has since spread to airliners and cars.

Which two-word spoken order does a ground proximity warning system add to alerts such as 'Sink rate' and 'Terrain'?

Pull up is the order to climb away at once. Engineer Donald Bateman invented the system after a series of 1960s accidents in which airworthy aircraft were flown into terrain.

Which fast-spinning device at the heart of an artificial horizon stays upright while the aircraft pitches and rolls?

Gyroscope horizons were proposed as far back as the 1740s. Mounted in a double gimbal, the spinning wheel holds its position while the aircraft moves around it.

Which flight-control software, linked to two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes, could push the nose down without pilot input?

MCAS was meant to make the MAX handle like the earlier 737 Next Generation. Boeing revealed its existence to pilots only after the first crash, of Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018.

Which fighter-style hand controller do Airbus airliners use in place of a traditional control yoke?

Sidestick controllers sit on a side console instead of between the pilot's knees, as in the F-16 fighter. Every Airbus airliner since the A320 of the 1980s has used one.

Which US Army pilot, later famous for a raid on Tokyo, made the first all-instrument 'blind' flight in 1929?

Jimmy Doolittle took off, flew and landed without a view outside the cockpit. The feat won him the Harmon Trophy and made all-weather airline operations practical.

Which first name is pilots' slang for the autopilot, by one account a nod to a British king?

George may honour King George VI, on the theory that RAF aircraft technically belonged to him. A rival story credits George De Beeson, who patented an autopilot in the 1930s.

Which cockpit system tracks nearby aircraft by transponder and can order a climb or descent to avert a collision?

TCAS works independently of air traffic control, giving its orders on a screen and by synthesized voice. Regulators were spurred into action by the 1956 mid-air collision over the Grand Canyon.

Which forward-facing probe, named after an 18th-century French engineer, feeds an aircraft's airspeed indicator?

Pitot tube trouble can be deadly: investigators suspected that a wasp nest inside one caused the failure that brought down Birgenair Flight 301. Henri Pitot devised it in 1732 to measure the flow of the Seine.

Which kind of navigation system tracks an aircraft's position from its own motion sensors, needing no outside signal?

Inertial systems such as the Delco Carousel gave airliners partly automated navigation. Their flaw is drift: small sensor errors build into ever larger errors in position.

On large aircraft, a 'stick shaker' rattles the pilots' control column to warn of which imminent danger?

An aerodynamic stall is the trigger. Regulators began requiring such protection after accidents like the 1963 crash of a BAC One-Eleven on a test flight.

Which term names the weatherproof nose cone that shields an airliner's weather antenna yet lets radio waves pass?

Radome blends 'radar' and 'dome'. It is built from material transparent to radio waves, so the weather radar in an airliner's nose can look straight through its own cover.

Which airliner's shooting down by a Soviet fighter in 1983 led President Reagan to open GPS to civilian use?

Korean Air Lines Flight 007 also led the United States to change how it tracked aircraft leaving Alaska. Reagan promised the satellite system free to civilians as a common good once it was ready.

In VOR, the network of radio beacons that pilots navigate by, what does the letter O stand for?

Omnidirectional beacons can be used from any bearing. A pilot flies along one of a station's 'radials', and crossing radials from two stations fixes the aircraft's position.

Which technology has aircraft transmit their own satellite-derived position every second for others to track?

ADS-B is 'automatic' because it needs no pilot input or interrogation from the ground to set it off. Each aircraft simply reports its identity, position, altitude and velocity.

Civil aircraft transponders grew out of which wartime system for telling friendly aircraft from hostile ones on radar?

IFF, short for 'identification friend or foe', was developed in World War II after radar arrived and several friendly fire incidents followed. Civil aviation later adopted it to pick out individual aircraft.

Which computer system holds 'full authority' over a modern jet engine, leaving pilots no manual override at all?

FADEC puts every operating parameter of the engine in the computer's hands. An analogue forerunner flew in the 1960s on the Olympus engines of Concorde.

Which datalink system, deployed in 1978, sends short text messages between airliners and their ground stations?

ACARS spared crews from passing every routine report by voice radio. It was designed by ARINC and at first used the Telex format.