50 Fun Facts About Boeing

Which hijacker parachuted from the rear stairs of a Boeing 727 in 1971 with $200,000 and was never identified?

D. B. Cooper's leap is the only unsolved air piracy case in commercial aviation. Boeing later fitted 727s with a latch, the Cooper vane, so the rear stairs could not be lowered in flight.

Ellen Church, hired by Boeing Air Transport in 1930 as the first female flight attendant, came from which profession?

Nursing was the job requirement: Church persuaded Boeing Air Transport that nurses on board would calm nervous flyers, so the first stewardesses all had to be registered nurses.

After World War I ended military orders, Boeing kept its factory busy building boats and which household goods?

Furniture such as dressers and counters left the Boeing workshop beside flat-bottomed boats called Sea Sleds, because cheap war-surplus planes had wiped out the market for new ones.

Which former NBA team was named in 1967 as a nod to Boeing's new contract for an airliner known as the SST?

Seattle SuperSonics was a nod to the city's aviation industry. The supersonic airliner was cancelled in 1971 before a prototype was finished, yet the team kept the name until it moved to Oklahoma City in 2008.

How was Boeing's Plant 2 bomber factory hidden from possible air attack during World War II?

A fake town on its roof, with plywood houses and fake streets, made the plant blend into the neighborhood across the river. Nearly 7,000 B-17 bombers were built underneath.

Which heavy metal band began touring the world in 2008 aboard a Boeing 757 flown by its singer, Bruce Dickinson?

Iron Maiden hired the jet for a 2008 world tour because Dickinson was also a qualified commercial airline pilot; for a 2016 tour the band upgraded to a far larger 747.

Which Hollywood actor owned a Boeing 707 in vintage Qantas colors and flew it himself as a licensed pilot?

John Travolta named the jet after his children, acted as a goodwill ambassador for Qantas, and in 2017 donated it to an aircraft restoration society in Australia.

NASA used two modified Boeing 747s to carry which spacecraft piggyback from distant landing sites back to Florida?

Space Shuttle orbiters were hoisted onto the jumbo jets by giant gantries for the ferry flight home. In 1977 tests, a prototype orbiter was even released from one in mid-air to glide down.

Which call sign does a Boeing VC-25, a heavily modified 747, use whenever the US president is on board?

Air Force One is a call sign rather than a plane: it was created after President Eisenhower's aircraft shared a flight number, and the same airspace, with a commercial flight.

Which airline launched the Boeing 747, ordering 25 of the jumbo jets in 1966 and flying the first passengers in 1970?

Pan Am's president Juan Trippe had asked Boeing for a jet two and a half times the size of the 707, and his airline shaped the design more than any customer before or since.

Which European plane maker, builder of the double-deck A380, is Boeing's chief rival in the market for large airliners?

Airbus began in 1970 as a consortium of European aerospace companies, formed to build a wide-body jet that could compete with American-made airliners.

Boeing built the huge first stage of which NASA rocket, the launcher that sent Apollo astronauts toward the Moon?

Saturn V's first stage, assembled by Boeing in New Orleans, was driven by five F-1 engines, the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled engines ever built.

Which American rival, maker of the DC-10 airliner and the F-15 Eagle fighter, merged with Boeing in 1997?

McDonnell Douglas merged into Boeing in a $13 billion stock swap, with Boeing as the surviving company, handing it fighter lines such as the F/A-18 Hornet.

Which Boeing airliner was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after two fatal crashes linked to its MCAS flight software?

737 MAX jets were kept on the ground until December 2020 after 346 people died in two similar crashes less than five months apart, in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Which name won an online public vote in 2003 to christen the new Boeing jet then known as the 7E7?

Dreamliner beat eLiner, Global Cruiser and Stratoclimber in a naming competition that drew about 500,000 online votes.

A reporter coined the name Flying Fortress in 1935 after noticing which feature of the Boeing B-17 prototype?

Its many machine guns, sticking out in every direction, led newspaper reporter Richard Williams to caption a photo with the phrase; Boeing saw the value of the name and trademarked it.

Which Boeing bomber type was the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945?

B-29 development and production cost about $3 billion, far more than the Manhattan Project that built the bomb, making the aircraft the most expensive weapons program of the war.

Which Boeing B-17, among the first to complete 25 combat missions over Europe, inspired a 1990 Hollywood film?

Memphis Belle and its crew were sent home after their 25th mission to tour America selling war bonds. The name came from a riverboat in a film the pilot had just watched.

Boeing's assembly plant in which Washington city is the largest building in the world by volume?

Everett's factory was built in 1967 because the 747 was too big for Boeing's existing plants, and it could hold all of Disneyland. The 767, 777 and 787 were later assembled there too.

Which Boeing bomber, in American military service since 1955, is informally known as the BUFF?

B-52 bombers are slated to keep flying into the 2050s, almost a century after the type entered service, an unprecedented career for any aircraft.

Which stunt did test pilot Tex Johnston fly in Boeing's Dash 80 jetliner prototype over a hydroplane race in 1955?

A barrel roll, flown twice in front of invited airline executives, earned Johnston a summons from Boeing's president the next day. The pilot answered that he had simply been selling airplanes.

The Boeing 307 Stratoliner of 1938 was the first airliner in service with which feature for cruising above the weather?

A pressurized cabin let the Stratoliner cruise at 20,000 feet while the rival DC-3 flew at 8,000. Only ten were built, and the first customer delivery went to millionaire Howard Hughes.

Which Boeing-built helicopter, a US Army workhorse since the 1960s, carries its two large rotors one behind the other?

Chinook rotors spin in opposite directions, so no tail rotor is needed and all the engine power goes into lift and thrust. The name honors the Chinook people of America's Northwest.

Which Boeing attack helicopter, in US Army service since 1986, carries Hellfire missiles and a 30 mm chain gun?

Apache crews can aim the 30 mm cannon simply by looking: a helmet-mounted sight makes the gun track the wearer's head movements and point wherever they look.

Which tiltrotor transport, built jointly by Boeing and Bell, takes off like a helicopter and cruises like an airplane?

Osprey engine pods swing forward 90 degrees in as little as 12 seconds once airborne, turning the world's first production tiltrotor into a fast turboprop.

The Boeing-built Lunar Roving Vehicle crossed the Moon on tires made of which material instead of rubber?

Woven steel wire, coated in zinc, formed each springy tire around an aluminum hub. Engineer Ferenc Pavlics came up with the mesh design, which later small rovers followed.

What is the name of Boeing's CST-100 crew capsule, which carried NASA astronauts to orbit for the first time in 2024?

Starliner was due to stay up for about eight days, but thruster failures led NASA to send it home empty. Its two astronauts waited until March 2025 for a ride back in a rival capsule.

Which part blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing jet minutes after takeoff from Portland in January 2024?

A door plug, the panel that fills an unused emergency exit opening, tore away during the climb because four bolts removed at the factory were never put back. Everyone on board survived.

Which unusual feature lets the long-winged Boeing 777X stay within the same airport size class as earlier 777s?

Folding wingtips, each about 11 feet long, swing up in roughly 20 seconds. No rules covered such a thing on an airliner, so US regulators had to write special conditions for the design.

Which Dallas-based low-cost carrier is famous for building its fleet around a single family of Boeing narrow-body jets?

Southwest began flying in 1971 as an intrastate airline linking only Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, and its business model went on to influence other low-cost carriers.

Which components overheated aboard Boeing 787s in January 2013, leading regulators to ground the entire fleet?

Lithium-ion batteries caused electrical fires on two Japanese-operated jets, triggering the first grounding of a whole airliner type by US regulators since the DC-10 in 1979.

The Boeing 787 was the first airliner with an airframe made mostly of which material rather than aluminum?

Carbon composites make up half of the 787 by weight, and the fuselage is formed from one-piece tubular sections instead of aluminum sheets joined by many fasteners.

Boeing moved its corporate headquarters in 2001 to which city, chosen over rival bids from Dallas and Denver?

Chicago won after all three finalists offered multimillion-dollar tax breaks, and it hosted Boeing for two decades until the company announced a move to Arlington, Virginia, in 2022.

William Boeing, who founded his aircraft company in 1916, had already made a fortune in which industry?

Lumber money paid for it all: in 1910 Boeing bought a boatyard on the Duwamish River, and within a few years it had become his first airplane factory.

Which airline was separated from Boeing in 1934 after a US law barred aircraft makers from owning air carriers?

United Airlines was one of three companies left when the Air Mail Act broke up William Boeing's aviation group; he sold his shares and left the company after the breakup.

Why did Boeing put the 747's cockpit on a raised upper deck, creating the famous hump?

For nose-loading freight: Boeing expected Concorde-style jets to take over passenger travel, so the 747 was built to convert easily into a cargo plane with a hinged front.

In 1919 William Boeing and Eddie Hubbard flew the first international airmail into the US from which Canadian city?

Vancouver's post office handed the pair a bag of 60 letters, which they flew in a Boeing seaplane to a landing on Lake Union as a demonstration of what airmail could do.

Boeing branched out in the 1970s by building which kind of fast passenger ferry for routes in Hawaii and Hong Kong?

Hydrofoil ferries sold as the Boeing Jetfoil were driven by waterjets and borrowed many systems from jet aircraft; the first three served Hawaii before moving to the Hong Kong to Macau run.

Which Boeing-built node was the first American-made component of the International Space Station?

Unity was built by Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama, and connects the station's Russian and American segments; it was the first of three linking nodes.

In the 1970s Boeing's helicopter division built unreliable vehicles of which kind for Boston and San Francisco?

Light rail cars from Boeing Vertol broke down faster than Boston's mechanics could repair them. The city rejected 40 of its order, and San Francisco bought some at a steep discount.

The Boeing T-7A Red Hawk jet trainer is named in honor of which group of World War II pilots?

Tuskegee Airmen painted the tails of their fighters bright red. The second half of the name salutes the P-40 Warhawk, the first aircraft their original squadron flew in combat.

Boeing's secret 1990s stealth demonstrator, the Bird of Prey, took its name from a starship in which franchise?

Star Trek's Klingon warship gave the jet its name. The aircraft made 40 flights in secret between 1996 and 1999 and was revealed to the public only in October 2002.

Which Japanese airline became the launch customer for the Boeing 787 in 2004 with a firm order for 50 jets?

All Nippon Airways expected its first jet in late 2008 but, after repeated delays to the program, did not take delivery until September 2011.

The last Boeing 747 ever built, a freighter, was delivered in January 2023 to which American cargo airline?

Atlas Air received the 1,574th and final 747, closing a production run of 54 years; the three jumbo freighters built just before it went to the same airline.

Which uncrewed Boeing spaceplane has flown secretive US military missions lasting more than two years in orbit?

X-37B's sixth mission ran 908 days, far beyond the 270 days the reusable robotic craft was designed to stay up, and each flight ends with a runway landing like an airplane's.

What is the nickname of Boeing's original wooden factory building, floated by barge to its home at the Museum of Flight?

The Red Barn was bought for one dollar from the local port authority, barged two miles up the Duwamish River and restored. It opened to the public in 1983.

Which Boeing engineer led the 747 design team in the 1960s and became known as the father of the 747?

Joe Sutter retired from Boeing in 1986 as head of airliner engineering, then served on the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster.

Which nickname was given to the Boeing workers who built the first 747 on a breakneck schedule in the late 1960s?

The Incredibles had only 28 months to design the world's largest airliner, about two-thirds of the time such a job normally took.

What is the name of Boeing's advanced prototyping arm, whose projects have included the X-45 combat drone?

Phantom Works develops advanced military technologies, many of them highly classified, into prototypes and then hands them to Boeing's other divisions to put into production.

Under which name did William Boeing incorporate his aircraft business in 1916, before renaming it after himself?

Pacific Aero Products was incorporated on July 15, 1916, a month after the first Boeing seaplane flew, and became the Boeing Airplane Company in April 1917.