Movies
In this 1986 blockbuster, Tom Cruise plays Navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
What is Top Gun?
This is the angle between the wing’s chord line and the relative wind.
What is angle of attack?
In December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, these two brothers made the first powered, controlled, sustained airplane flights.
Who are Orville and Wilbur Wright?
This type of aircraft, with spinning blades on top instead of fixed wings, can hover in place and land almost anywhere.
What is a helicopter?
This U.S. airline is famous for its red, white, and blue triangular “widget” logo.
What is Delta Air Lines?
Tom Hanks stars in this film about a US Airways captain who lands an Airbus A320 on the Hudson River.
What is Sully?
A wing stalls when it exceeds this angle.
What is the critical angle of attack?
In 1927 he made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight, from New York to Paris, in the Spirit of St. Louis.
Who is Charles Lindbergh?
Nicknamed the "Jumbo Jet," this Boeing airliner, which debuted in 1970, was the first wide-body plane and has a distinctive hump on its upper deck.
What is the Boeing 747?
Known for its heart logo and open-seating tradition, this airline began operating in Texas.
What is Southwest Airlines?
In this comedy, a former fighter pilot must land a passenger plane after the pilots become incapacitated.
What is Airplane!?
True or false: An airplane can stall at any airspeed.
What is true?
In 1947 Chuck Yeager became the first pilot to officially break the sound barrier in this orange, rocket-powered aircraft.
What is the Bell X-1?
In 1969 NASA launched this spacecraft, which carried astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the Moon.
What is Apollo 11?
This German flag carrier is a founding member of the Star Alliance.
What is Lufthansa?
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr., who impersonates a Pan Am pilot in this film.
What is Catch Me If You Can?
Regardless of airspeed, this change to angle of attack is essential to recover from a stall.
What is reducing angle of attack below the critical angle?
In 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
Who is Amelia Earhart?
Before airplanes, people first took to the sky in these giant fabric bags filled with hot air, first flown by the Montgolfier brothers in France in 1783.
What are hot air balloons?
Based in Dubai, this airline operates one of the world’s largest fleets of Airbus A380 aircraft.
What is Emirates?
Denzel Washington plays an airline pilot who performs an emergency inverted landing after an aircraft malfunction in this 2012 film
What is Flight?
A stall combined with sufficient yaw can develop into this autorotating flight condition.
What is a spin?
In January 1976 British Airways and Air France launched passenger service with this supersonic airliner, which could cross the Atlantic in under four hours.
What is the Concorde?
Retired in 2011, this NASA vehicle launched like a rocket but landed like a glider, and flew 135 missions.
What is the Space Shuttle?
This airline’s name means “Finland’s airline,” and its main hub is Helsinki Airport.
What is Finnair?