Airliners
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50 free Airliners trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Airliners are the machines that shrank the world. In about a century they went from noisy cabins for a handful of brave passengers to double-deck giants and jets that outran the sun across the Atlantic, and each leap left a good story behind it. This quiz covers the types you can tell apart from the departure lounge: wide-body and narrow-body, twinjets and trijets, and the propeller-driven workhorses of regional routes. It also asks about the makers behind them, the factories where they take shape, the parts that keep them flying, and the hijacker, rock stars and film actors who made certain aircraft famous. It is pitched for curious travellers as much as for plane spotters. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing more than when you boarded.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01NASA modified two 747 jumbo jets to carry which spacecraft piggyback on top of the fuselage?
The Space Shuttle
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.
Q 02Airbus ferries wings and fuselage sections between its factories in a bulbous transport named after which whale?
Beluga
Beluga started as a nickname for the aircraft officially called the Super Transporter, and it caught on so well that Airbus adopted it.
Q 03D. B. Cooper parachuted from the rear airstair of which three-engined airliner during his 1971 hijacking?
Boeing 727
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.
Q 04Heating at supersonic speed made Concorde's fuselage do what during each transatlantic flight?
Stretch several inches
Concorde would stretch several inches in cruise, by as much as 300 mm, as air friction heated its aluminium skin.
Q 05Which heavy metal band toured the world in a 757 airliner named Ed Force One, flown by its singer?
Iron Maiden
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.
Q 06Most modern airliners use a design known as a wet wing, which stores what inside the sealed wing structure?
Jet fuel
Jet fuel fills the sealed wing itself rather than separate tanks or bladders inside it, which saves weight.
Q 07Airliner tyres are usually inflated with which gas rather than ordinary compressed air?
Nitrogen
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.
Q 08Which four-engined jetliner did actor John Travolta fly as his personal aircraft, painted in vintage Qantas colours?
Boeing 707
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.
Q 09Which airliner, the largest passenger aircraft ever built, carries travellers on two full-length decks?
Airbus A380
The Airbus A380 is certified to carry up to 853 people, though a typical three-class layout seats about 525 across its two decks.
Q 10Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed which type of airliner on the Hudson River after a bird strike in 2009?
Airbus A320
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.
Q 11Which name won a public vote in 2003 to become the title of the 787 airliner, then in development?
Dreamliner
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.
Q 12Which airline began scheduled Concorde flights on the same day as Air France in January 1976?
British Airways
British Airways kept its supersonic fleet flying for 27 years, until the last aircraft were retired in 2003.
Q 13What feature of the passenger cabin defines a wide-body airliner such as the 767 or the A350?
Two aisles
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.
Q 21Which car maker built the three-engined Trimotor airliner of the 1920s, nicknamed the Tin Goose?
Ford
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.
Q 22Pan American's Clipper airliners crossed the Atlantic and Pacific in the late 1930s as which kind of aircraft?
Flying boats
Flying boats suited the ocean routes of Pan American, which asked makers for double the passenger payload of its earlier Martin M-130.
Q 23Which famous aviator, a major TWA stockholder, pushed the airline to order the Lockheed Constellation in 1939?
Howard Hughes
Q 14Which British jetliner carried the world's first fare-paying jet passengers, from London to Johannesburg in 1952?
De Havilland Comet
The De Havilland Comet flew the multi-stop route for BOAC, and two years later metal-fatigue crashes grounded the whole fleet.
Q 15Which twin-engined propeller airliner of the 1930s was built in thousands for wartime service as the C-47?
Douglas DC-3
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.
Q 16Which airliner's MAX version was grounded worldwide for twenty months after two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019?
Boeing 737
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.
Q 17Which Soviet supersonic airliner flew two months before Concorde and was nicknamed Concordski in the West?
Tupolev Tu-144
The Tupolev Tu-144 beat its Western rival into the air but carried passengers on only 55 flights before it was withdrawn.
Q 18Embraer, maker of the E-Jet family of regional airliners, is based in which country?
Brazil
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.
Q 19Airbus builds its A350 wide-body airliners on a final assembly line in which city in southern France?
Toulouse
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.
Q 20Jet A-1, which powers most of the world's jet airliners, is a refined form of which liquid once burned in lamps?
Kerosene
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.
Howard Hughes had TWA ask for a 40-passenger airliner able to cross the United States, with a range of 3,500 miles.
Q 24The Lockheed Constellation propeller airliner, nicknamed Connie, is recognised by which unusual feature at the rear?
A triple tail
A triple tail kept the aircraft low enough to fit into the hangars of its day.
Q 25Which devices turn an airliner's engine exhaust partly forwards to help slow the aircraft after landing?
Thrust reversers
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.
Q 26Concorde's only fatal accident, in July 2000, happened moments after take-off from which city?
Paris
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.
Q 27The Airbus A220 was designed and first sold as the CSeries by which Canadian company?
Bombardier
Bombardier had the jet in service under its own name for two years before Airbus took control of the programme and renamed it.
Q 28Fokker, builder of the F27 Friendship and Fokker 100 airliners, was based in which European country?
Netherlands
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.
Q 29The Comac C919, a narrow-body airliner that entered passenger service in 2023, is built in which country?
China
China is written into the model number: the C in C919 stands for both Comac and the country that builds it.
Q 30Which wide-body airliner, launched in 1990 with an order from United Airlines, is the world's largest twinjet?
Boeing 777
The Boeing 777 is also the most-built wide-body airliner, and eight major airlines helped to shape its design.