The Aviator Trivia
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49 free The Aviator trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Aviator is Martin Scorsese's 2004 portrait of Howard Hughes from the making of Hell's Angels in 1927 to the single hop of the Spruce Goose in 1947, with Leonardo DiCaprio charting the descent from golden-boy filmmaker and record-setting pilot to a man sealed in a germ-free screening room. It earned 11 Academy Award nominations and five wins, including Cate Blanchett's first Oscar for playing Katharine Hepburn. This quiz covers the cast (who played Ava Gardner, Jean Harlow, Errol Flynn and the Pan Am boss), the plot beats from the beet-field crash to the Senate hearing, and the craft: why the first 52 minutes look red and cyan, why Scorsese used radio-controlled scale models instead of CGI, and where the real aircraft ended up. There are questions too on the long list of directors and stars who nearly made a Hughes film first. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play through or print it out.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Aviator's opening scene, which word does Howard Hughes's mother teach him to spell as she bathes him?
Quarantine
Quarantine. As she spells it out she warns the boy about cholera and typhus and tells him he is not safe, the scene the film offers as the root of his later fears.
Q 02Cate Blanchett plays which screen legend in The Aviator?
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn. At Scorsese's request, Blanchett watched prints of the star's first 15 films to absorb her poise and mannerisms.
Q 03Which film's star beat The Aviator's DiCaprio to the Oscar?
Ray
Ray. Jamie Foxx won Best Actor for playing Ray Charles, and DiCaprio had to wait another eleven years for an Oscar of his own, finally winning for The Revenant.
Q 04Which disorder drives Howard Hughes's decline in The Aviator?
OCD
OCD. DiCaprio has a mild form himself, a childhood dread of stepping on pavement cracks, and it resurfaced as he played Hughes.
Q 05What is the nickname of Howard Hughes's giant flying boat, the H-4 Hercules?
Spruce Goose
Spruce Goose. Despite the name it was built almost entirely of birch, and it flew only once, with Hughes himself at the controls.
Q 06Which of these Oscars did The Aviator win?
Best Supporting Actress
Best Supporting Actress went to Cate Blanchett, the only one of the film's three acting nominees to win. She later loaned the statuette to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Q 07Kate Beckinsale plays which actress in The Aviator?
Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner. In the film it is she who gets the reclusive Hughes bathed, shaved and dressed so that he can face the Senate hearing.
Q 08Which aviation film is Howard Hughes directing as The Aviator's main story begins in 1927?
Hell's Angels
Hell's Angels. Hughes shot it as a silent picture, then decided to redo it with sound, and the production dragged on for three years.
Q 09In The Aviator, which airline does Howard Hughes buy control of?
TWA
TWA. Hughes later orders a loan against all of the airline's planes and equipment so that he can keep building his giant flying boat.
Q 10In The Aviator, which airline is Howard Hughes's great rival for international routes?
Pan Am
Pan Am. Its boss has a friendly senator introduce a bill that would hand the airline a legal monopoly on American flights abroad.
Q 11In The Aviator, Katharine Hepburn leaves Howard Hughes for which actor?
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy. Hughes still steps in afterwards, buying off a scandal sheet to keep its photographs of her with the married star out of print.
Q 12Which phrase does Howard Hughes compulsively repeat in the final scene of The Aviator?
The way of the future
The way of the future. He says it of jet airliners minutes after his triumphant flight, then cannot stop, and is hidden in a washroom still repeating it.
Q 13Which film had Martin Scorsese already made with Leonardo DiCaprio before The Aviator?
Gangs of New York
Q 21In The Aviator, where does Howard Hughes crash the XF-11 spy plane?
Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills. The real Hughes was trying to put the failing plane down on the open ground of a country club and fell just short, ploughing into houses instead.
Q 22The Aviator opens with the young Howard Hughes at home in which city?
Houston
Houston. The family fortune came from the oil-drilling bit his father's company made there, the money that later paid for the films and the planes.
Q 23In The Aviator, which film's release prompts Howard Hughes to remake his war epic with sound?
The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer. Hughes declares his finished silent picture out of date and reshoots the whole thing, which nearly bankrupts the family tool company.
Gangs of New York. It was DiCaprio who then carried the Hughes script to Scorsese, after the director first attached to it stepped aside.
Q 14On which holiday did The Aviator go on wide release in American cinemas?
Christmas Day
Christmas Day. After a week in just 40 cinemas it opened across the country, and its takings rose rather than fell in the second weekend.
Q 15Alec Baldwin plays which airline chairman in The Aviator?
Juan Trippe
Juan Trippe. He pushes the reclusive Hughes into a public Senate hearing, sure he will never show his face, and the plan backfires when Hughes turns up and wins the room.
Q 16Gwen Stefani appears in The Aviator as which 1930s star?
Jean Harlow
Jean Harlow. Hughes cast her when his silent war epic was remade with sound and its Norwegian leading lady's accent would no longer do.
Q 17Jude Law plays which swashbuckling actor in The Aviator?
Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn. In a nightclub scene he breezily helps himself to a pea from Hughes's carefully ordered plate, and Hughes freezes, unable to touch the meal.
Q 18In The Aviator, Alan Alda plays which senator who investigates Howard Hughes?
Owen Brewster
Owen Brewster. At the hearing Hughes turns the tables, accusing the senator of doing a rival airline's bidding, and it is the investigator who comes off worse.
Q 19John C. Reilly plays which member of Howard Hughes's circle in The Aviator?
Noah Dietrich
Noah Dietrich. He is Hughes's long-suffering money man, routinely ordered to mortgage everything to pay for the boss's latest inspiration.
Q 20Who wrote the screenplay for The Aviator?
John Logan
John Logan. His script stops in 1947, leaving out the long years as a recluse that most people picture when they think of Howard Hughes.
Q 24Which film beat The Aviator to Best Picture?
Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby. The Aviator still won more Oscars than any other film that night, five of them, but the boxing drama took Best Picture and Best Director.
Q 25The Aviator recreates 1930s Hollywood, but in which Canadian city was most of it shot?
Montreal
Montreal. The Cocoanut Grove nightclub was rebuilt on a sound stage there, and so was the front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre for the big premiere scene.
Q 26In which California harbour did Howard Hughes fly the H-4 Hercules for the only time?
Long Beach
Long Beach. The day was billed as taxi tests only, but on the last run, with reporters aboard, Hughes lifted the giant off the water.
Q 27In The Aviator, where does Howard Hughes crash-land the H-1 Racer after its speed record?
A beet field
A beet field. The racer carried as little fuel as possible to save weight, and Hughes kept making passes over the course until the tank ran dry.
Q 28In The Aviator, what does Howard Hughes insist on waiting for before filming his dogfights?
Clouds
Clouds. With nothing standing still behind them his planes looked slow, like models, so he hired a meteorologist and kept the whole air fleet waiting on the ground.
Q 29In The Aviator, where does Howard Hughes hide before the Senate hearing?
A screening room
A screening room. The real Hughes did seal himself in one for months, living on chocolate bars and milk, but that was about ten years after the 1947 hearings.
Q 30Who beat Scorsese's Aviator to Best Director?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood. Two years later the result was reversed: Scorsese finally won the award, and Eastwood was among the nominees he beat.