Airline Travel Trivia Quiz Questions

Trivia quiz with answers about airlines and airline travel.

Airline Travel Trivia Questions

What is an airline?
A: An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight.

Airline services can be categorized as being intercontinental, domestic, regional, or what?
A: International.

What is the largest airline currently?
A: American Airlines Group.

What was the world’s first airline?
A: DELAG, Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft I.

When was it was founded?
A: On November 16, 1909, with government assistance, and operated airships manufactured by The Zeppelin Corporation.

Where was its headquarters?
A: Frankfurt.

When was the first fixed wing scheduled airline started?
A: On January 1, 1914, from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tampa, Florida.

What are the four oldest non-dirigible airlines that still exist?
A: Netherlands' KLM (1919), Colombia's Avianca (1919), Australia's Qantas (1921), and the Czech Republic's Czech Airlines (1923).

The earliest fixed wing airline in Europe was Aircraft Transport and Travel, formed by whom?
A: George Holt Thomas in 1916.

Using a fleet of former military Airco DH.4A biplanes that had been modified to carry two passengers in the fuselage, it operated relief flights between where?
A: Folkestone and Ghent.

On 15 July 1919, the company flew a proving flight across what?
A: The English Channel, despite a lack of support from the British government.

Flown by Lt. H Shaw in an Airco DH.9 between RAF Hendon and Paris – Le Bourget Airport, the flight took how long?
A: 2 hours and 30 minutes.

On 25 August 1919, the company used DH.16s to pioneer a regular service from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome to where?
A: Le Bourget, the first regular international service in the world.

The airline soon gained a reputation for reliability, despite problems with bad weather, and began to attract what?
A: European competition.

In November 1919, it won the first what?
A: British civil airmail contract.

Six Royal Air Force Airco DH.9A aircraft were lent to the company, to operate what?
A: The airmail service between Hawkinge and Cologne.

When were they were returned to the Royal Air Force?
A: In 1920.

Handley Page Transport was established in 1919 and used the company's converted wartime Type O/400 bombers with a capacity for 12 passengers, to run a what?
A: A London-Paris passenger service.

What was the first French airline?
A: Société des lignes Latécoère, later known as Aéropostale, which started its first service in late 1918 to Spain.

What was the first German airline to use heavier than air aircraft?
A: Deutsche Luft-Reederei established in 1917 which started operating in February 1919.

When did the Dutch airline KLM make its first flight?
A: In 1920, and is the oldest continuously operating airline in the world.

What was its first flight?
A: From Croydon Airport, London to Amsterdam, using a leased Aircraft Transport and Travel DH-16, and carrying two British journalists and a number of newspapers.

Early European airlines tended to favor what?
A: Comfort – the passenger cabins were often spacious with luxurious interiors – over speed and efficiency.

The relatively basic navigational capabilities of pilots at the time also meant that delays due to the weather were what?
A: Commonplace.

In 1924, Imperial Airways was formed from the merger of Instone Air Line Company, British Marine Air Navigation, Daimler Airway and Handley Page Transport Co Ltd., to allow British airlines to compete with stiff competition from whom?
A: French and German airlines that were enjoying heavy government subsidies.

What was the first new airliner ordered by Imperial Airways?
A: It was the Handley Page W8f City of Washington, delivered on 3 November 1924.

In the first year of operation the company carried how many passengers and letters?
A: 11,395 passengers and 212,380 letters.

In April 1925 what movie became the first film to be screened for passengers on a scheduled airliner flight when it was shown on the London-Paris route?
A: The Lost World.

In 1926, Alan Cobham surveyed what flight route?
A: From the UK to Cape Town, South Africa, following this up with another proving flight to Melbourne, Australia.

Regular services to Cairo and Basra began when?
A: In 1927 and were extended to Karachi in 1929.

The London-Australia service was inaugurated in 1932 with what airliners?
A: The Handley Page HP 42 airliners.

Imperial's aircraft were small, most seating fewer than how many passengers?
A: Twenty.

Only about how many passengers used Imperial Airways in the 1930s?
A: 50,000.

In 1931, the airship Graf Zeppelin began offering regular scheduled passenger service between Germany and where?
A: South America, usually every two weeks, which continued until 1937.

In 1936, the airship Hindenburg entered passenger service and successfully crossed the Atlantic 36 times before what?
A: Crashing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937.

By the end of the 1930s Aeroflot had become what?
A: The world's largest airline, employing more than 4,000 pilots and 60,000 other service personnel and operating around 3,000 aircraft (of which 75% were considered obsolete by its own standards).

During the Soviet era Aeroflot was synonymous with what?
A: Russian civil aviation, as it was the only air carrier.

It became the first airline in the world to operate sustained regular jet services on what date?
A: 15 September 1956 with the Tupolev Tu-104.

Tony Jannus conducted the United States' first scheduled commercial airline flight on what date?
A: January 1, 1914 for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line.

The 23-minute flight traveled between St. Petersburg, Florida and Tampa, Florida, passing some 50 feet (15 m) above what?
A: Tampa Bay in Jannus' Benoist XIV wood and muslin biplane flying boat.

His passenger was a former mayor of St. Petersburg, who paid how much for the privilege of sitting on a wooden bench in the open cockpit?
A: $400.

The Airboat line operated for how long?
A: About four months, carrying more than 1,200 passengers who paid $5 each.

When did Chalk's International Airlines begin service between Miami and Bimini in the Bahamas?
A: In February 1919.

Based in Ft. Lauderdale, Chalk's claimed to be the oldest continuously operating airline in the United States until its closure in what year?
A: 2008.

Following World War I, the United States found itself swamped with what?
A: Aviators.

Many decided to take their war-surplus aircraft on barnstorming campaigns doing what?
A: Performing aerobatic maneuvers to woo crowds.

In 1918, the United States Postal Service won the financial backing of Congress to begin experimenting with what?
A: Air mail service, initially using Curtiss Jenny aircraft that had been procured by the United States Army Air Service.

Private operators were the first to fly the mail but due to numerous accidents who was was tasked with mail delivery?
A: The US Army.

During the Army's involvement they proved to be too what?
A: Unreliable and lost their air mail duties.

By the mid-1920s, the Postal Service had developed its own air mail network, based on a transcontinental backbone between where?
A: New York City and San Francisco.

To supplement this service, they offered twelve contracts for what?
A: Spur routes to independent bidders.

Some of the carriers that won these routes would, through time and mergers, evolve into what airlines?
A: Pan Am, Delta Air Lines, Braniff Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines (originally a division of Boeing), Trans World Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and Eastern Air Lines.

In 1925 the Ford Motor Company bought out the Stout Aircraft Company and began construction of the all-metal Ford Trimotor, which became what?
A: The first successful American airliner.

With a 12-passenger capacity, the Trimotor made passenger service what?
A: Potentially profitable.

Pan Am and Northwest Airways (which began flights to Canada in the 1920s) were the only U.S. airlines to do what before the 1940s?
A: Go international.