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60 free Boeing 747 trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Boeing 747 trivia quiz covers the Queen of the Skies from Juan Trippe's request for a jet two and a half times the size of the 707 to the last freighter rolling out of Everett in 2022. The easy questions ask how many engines it has, which airline launched it, what its nickname was, why the cockpit sits in a hump, and which presidential aircraft is based on it. Then it works through the development story: the design team called the Incredibles, the 28-month schedule, the factory that is still the largest building by volume on Earth, the first flight in February 1969, the engine troubles and the debt that nearly sank Boeing. The hard end is for aviation obsessives: the CX-HLS military competition that gave it its raised cockpit, the depleted uranium counterweights, the truck-mounted taxi trainer called Waddell's Wagon, the 747SP, the two-crew glass cockpit of the -400, the 1,087 passengers airlifted on one El Al flight, the fifth-engine pod, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and SOFIA, the deadliest crash in aviation history and the final tally of 1,574 built. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the Boeing 747, the 747-8, the 747SP, the Everett factory, the Tenerife disaster and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our aviation history and Concorde quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many engines does a Boeing 747 have?
4
The original JT9D turbofans were later joined by General Electric CF6 and Rolls-Royce RB211 options.
Q 02Which airline was the launch customer for the 747, ordering 25 in April 1966?
Pan Am
The order was worth $525 million, and Pan Am shaped the design more than any single airline before or since.
Q 03Pan Am's president asked Boeing for a jet how much bigger than the 707?
2.5 times the size
Juan Trippe wanted seat costs cut by 30% and thought bigger planes would ease airport congestion.
Q 04Who led the 747 design team, having left the 737 programme in 1965?
Joe Sutter
Air & Space/Smithsonian later called him the 'father of the 747'.
Q 05On what date did the 747 make its first flight?
February 9, 1969
Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle flew it, with Jess Wallick as flight engineer, and found it largely immune to Dutch roll.
Q 06The 747 entered service on January 22, 1970, on which Pan Am route?
New York–London
The original aircraft, Clipper Young America, overheated an engine, so Clipper Victor flew the delayed inaugural.
Q 07Who christened Pan Am's first 747 at Dulles on January 15, 1970?
Pat Nixon
Red, white and blue water was sprayed on the aircraft instead of champagne.
Q 08The 747 was the first aircraft to be called what, as the first wide-body airliner?
Jumbo Jet
The aviation press coined the term for its size; 'Queen of the Skies' came later.
Q 09Why was the 747's cockpit placed on a raised upper deck, creating its distinctive hump?
So a cargo door could be fitted in the nose
Boeing expected supersonic jets to make it obsolete as an airliner, so it was designed for easy conversion to a freighter.
Q 10Boeing's raised-cockpit and nose-door ideas came from its losing bid for which 1960s USAF contest?
CX-HLS, won by the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy
Every bidder moved the cockpit above the cargo bay so the aircraft could load through the nose.
Q 11Because of the pace of the 747 programme, the people who worked on it earned what nickname?
The Incredibles
They had 28 months to design the aircraft, two-thirds of the normal time.
Q 12The purpose-built 747 factory near Everett, Washington, holds what world record?
Largest building by volume
The full-scale mock-up was built inside before the roof over it was finished, and the plant has since been expanded for other wide-bodies.
Q 13Which engine maker agreed in late 1966 to develop the JT9D high-bypass turbofan for the 747?
Pratt & Whitney
Q 21Which 747 variant of 1989 brought a two-crew glass cockpit and became the most common version?
747-400
It cut the instruments from about 690 dials to 300 and eliminated the flight engineer.
Q 22The shortened, longer-range 747SP entered service in 1976. What does 'SP' stand for?
Special Performance
It was 48 feet 4 inches shorter than the -100 and was born from a joint request by Pan Am and Iran Air.
Q 23How many 747SPs were built?
45
The line reopened in 1987 after five years to build one last SP for the United Arab Emirates government.
The 747-300, first completed in 1983, was distinguished by what change?
GE had pioneered high-bypass technology but was tied up building engines for the C-5 Galaxy.
Q 14Boeing built a taxi trainer nicknamed 'Waddell's Wagon' for the 747. What was it?
A mock cockpit on the roof of a truck
It let pilots practise steering from the unfamiliar height of the upper deck before any 747 was finished.
Q 15How long did the first full-scale 747 evacuation test take, against the FAA's 90-second limit?
Two and a half minutes
Upper-deck volunteers escaped by harness and reel rather than a slide, and several people were injured.
Q 16Counterweights of what material fixed the wing flutter problem on early 747s?
Depleted uranium
The El Al 747 that crashed at Amsterdam in 1992 carried 622 lb of it in the tailplane, prompting worried investigations.
Q 17How much did Boeing owe its banks during the 747 programme, a record for any company at the time?
$1.2 billion
Boeing's president William Allen later admitted, 'It was really too large a project for us.'
Q 18What is the sweep angle of the 747's wings?
37.5 degrees
The high sweep gives a Mach 0.85 cruise and shortens the span enough to fit existing hangars.
Q 19How many main landing gear legs does a 747 have?
4
Each carries a four-wheel bogie, and the aircraft can land on just two opposing gears if the others fail.
Q 20In a typical three-class layout, about how many passengers does a 747 carry?
366
Economy is ten abreast in a 3–4–3 layout, with a smaller cabin upstairs behind the cockpit.
A stretched upper deck
It was briefly designated 747SUD, for 'stretched upper deck', before the -300 name stuck.
Q 25The 747-8 takes the '8' in its name from which other Boeing aircraft, whose GEnx engines it shares?
787 Dreamliner
It was launched on November 14, 2005 as the 747 Advanced and first delivered in October 2011.
Q 26Which cargo airline took the first delivery of a 747-8, in 2011?
Cargolux
Lufthansa received the first passenger 747-8 Intercontinental in May 2012.
Q 27How long is the 747-8's fuselage, making it the longest airliner in service when it debuted?
250 ft (76 m)
It was stretched 18 feet over the -400 and overtook the Airbus A340-600.
Q 28How many Boeing 747s were built in total over the 54-year production run?
1,574
The last, a 747-8F for Atlas Air, rolled out on December 6, 2022 and was delivered on January 31, 2023.
Q 29Which airline received the very last 747 built, in January 2023?
Atlas Air
Boeing threw an event at Everett for thousands of workers to mark the delivery.
Q 30The US presidential aircraft popularly known as Air Force One is which 747-based military variant?
VC-25
The E-4B is the airborne command post; 'Air Force One' is technically the call sign of any USAF aircraft carrying the president.