Air & Space Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of Airline History
:focal(337x55:338x56)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/23/01/2301f0d0-7800-446d-bfbc-cd41994c6b0d/cabin.jpg)
Who was the world’s first airplane passenger? The honor goes to Charles Furnas, a mechanic who was taken aloft by Wilbur Wright on May 14, 1908. “It was a good start and an easy landing,” noted Wilbur. The first scheduled commercial flight with a paying passenger happened six years later—and commercial aviation was born.
We’ve turned to Daniel L. Rust’s fine book, Flying Across America: The Airline Passenger Experience (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), for today’s quiz. Trace the evolution of commercial air travel in the following 10 questions, and then test your friends.
Text used with the permission of the author.