Boeing
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50 free Boeing trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Boeing has been building aircraft for more than a century, and its story runs through most of modern aviation. A boat builder's side project grew into the company behind the jumbo jet, a long line of military aircraft and hardware that helped take astronauts to the Moon. Along the way it has collected daring test flights, costly gambles, famous customers and a few spectacular setbacks. This quiz covers the whole sweep: the founder and the early years, the wartime bombers, the jetliners of the 7-series, the helicopters and military jets, and the company's part in the space program. Expect questions on nicknames, factories, mergers, clever engineering and the odd sidelines the company tried when orders dried up, plus the celebrities and one notorious criminal whose stories involve a Boeing. The opening rounds are friendly to anyone who has ever watched jets from an airport terminal, so casual flyers and families can play along. Later rounds reward aviation fans who know their model numbers and company history, with a handful of deep cuts at the end. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you knowing something new.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which hijacker parachuted from the rear stairs of a Boeing 727 in 1971 with $200,000 and was never identified?
D. B. Cooper
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.
Q 02Ellen Church, hired by Boeing Air Transport in 1930 as the first female flight attendant, came from which profession?
Nursing
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.
Q 03After World War I ended military orders, Boeing kept its factory busy building boats and which household goods?
Furniture
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.
Q 04Which former NBA team was named in 1967 as a nod to Boeing's new contract for an airliner known as the SST?
Seattle SuperSonics
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.
Q 05How was Boeing's Plant 2 bomber factory hidden from possible air attack during World War II?
A fake town on its roof
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.
Q 06Which heavy metal band began touring the world in 2008 aboard a Boeing 757 flown by its singer, Bruce Dickinson?
Iron Maiden
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.
Q 07Which Hollywood actor owned a Boeing 707 in vintage Qantas colors and flew it himself as a licensed pilot?
John Travolta
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.
Q 08NASA used two modified Boeing 747s to carry which spacecraft piggyback from distant landing sites back to Florida?
Space Shuttle
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.
Q 09Which call sign does a Boeing VC-25, a heavily modified 747, use whenever the US president is on board?
Air Force One
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.
Q 10Which airline launched the Boeing 747, ordering 25 of the jumbo jets in 1966 and flying the first passengers in 1970?
Pan Am
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.
Q 11Which European plane maker, builder of the double-deck A380, is Boeing's chief rival in the market for large airliners?
Airbus
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.
Q 12Boeing built the huge first stage of which NASA rocket, the launcher that sent Apollo astronauts toward the Moon?
Saturn V
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.
Q 13Which American rival, maker of the DC-10 airliner and the F-15 Eagle fighter, merged with Boeing in 1997?
McDonnell Douglas
Q 21Which stunt did test pilot Tex Johnston fly in Boeing's Dash 80 jetliner prototype over a hydroplane race in 1955?
A barrel roll
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.
Q 22The Boeing 307 Stratoliner of 1938 was the first airliner in service with which feature for cruising above the weather?
A pressurized cabin
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.
Q 23Which Boeing-built helicopter, a US Army workhorse since the 1960s, carries its two large rotors one behind the other?
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.
Q 14Which Boeing airliner was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after two fatal crashes linked to its MCAS flight software?
737 MAX
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.
Q 15Which name won an online public vote in 2003 to christen the new Boeing jet then known as the 7E7?
Dreamliner
Dreamliner beat eLiner, Global Cruiser and Stratoclimber in a naming competition that drew about 500,000 online votes.
Q 16A reporter coined the name Flying Fortress in 1935 after noticing which feature of the Boeing B-17 prototype?
Its many machine guns
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.
Q 17Which Boeing bomber type was the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945?
B-29
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.
Q 18Which Boeing B-17, among the first to complete 25 combat missions over Europe, inspired a 1990 Hollywood film?
Memphis Belle
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.
Q 19Boeing's assembly plant in which Washington city is the largest building in the world by volume?
Everett
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.
Q 20Which Boeing bomber, in American military service since 1955, is informally known as the BUFF?
B-52
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.
Chinook
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.
Q 24Which Boeing attack helicopter, in US Army service since 1986, carries Hellfire missiles and a 30 mm chain gun?
Apache
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.
Q 25Which tiltrotor transport, built jointly by Boeing and Bell, takes off like a helicopter and cruises like an airplane?
Osprey
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.
Q 26The Boeing-built Lunar Roving Vehicle crossed the Moon on tires made of which material instead of rubber?
Woven steel wire
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.
Q 27What is the name of Boeing's CST-100 crew capsule, which carried NASA astronauts to orbit for the first time in 2024?
Starliner
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.
Q 28Which part blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing jet minutes after takeoff from Portland in January 2024?
A door plug
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.
Q 29Which unusual feature lets the long-winged Boeing 777X stay within the same airport size class as earlier 777s?
Folding wingtips
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.
Q 30Which Dallas-based low-cost carrier is famous for building its fleet around a single family of Boeing narrow-body jets?
Southwest
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.