Now boarding: The airline quiz for frequent flyers and terminal romantics 

Good morning, ohayogozaimasu, bonjour and bom dia. Wherever this column finds you today, I hope that you’re having a fresh and lively start to your Sunday. Over this way it’s a quick pit stop back home (23 hours) after 14 days in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok and Tokyo. Then it’s a peppy dash up to Copenhagen and across to Abu Dhabi before coming back to base on Friday. As there have been a lot of flights, terminals and early starts these past two weeks, aviation and the general state of it have been front of mind. And because it has been a while since we’ve had a Faster Lane quiz, I thought I would turn my observations into a series of questions that will hopefully challenge even Monocle’s most frequent flyers.

Of course, every quiz requires a prize, so if you’re a paying subscriber you get this rather fancy Trolley tote (valued at more than $400) and if you enjoy this newsletter for free and are yet to join the subs club then we will send along one of our new Cotton Tenugui designs from our summer 2026 collection. The cutoff for answers is 10.00 Zürich time on Monday. Ready? Here we go!

1.
Which airline has understood that the ground experience is integral to overall brand enjoyment and provided a lounge concept so good that you arrive early? A little clue: one of Monocle’s favourite designers is responsible for the award-winning approach.

2.
Name the European carrier with the best make-up and hair? And yes, I am talking about the girls and not the boys. Good heavens. Another clue: think Med.

3.
Staying with the aisles of an Airbus, which European airline wins for having the most masculine, capable crew and consistently good beards? And yes, I am talking about male crew.

4.
Can you name the carrier that has a newish in-flight safety video in which the passengers who have been cast for this film are so dreamy, medicated and generally checked out that they don’t stand a chance of evacuating an aircraft that has done a belly landing?

5.
Which supposedly premium airline has made the very bad decision to remove all magazines (including Monocle) from the front of its long-haul aircraft? What will the crew now read during those endless hours crisscrossing the Arctic?

6.
Can you name the Asian airline that has no sense of how to conduct service on a six-hour, north-south, overnight flight and thinks it best to just serve dinner, then go straight into breakfast and clatter the night away with the clanking of cutlery and crockery?

7.
Which carrier has had the good sense to build loyalty and create a sense of occasion by introducing a collectable series of destination-focused ceramics for its top customers?

8.
Name the G7 nation that is technologically advanced and a master of big infrastructure and innovative design solutions – but somehow continues to have the most arse-backward immigration and arrivals procedure. 

9.
Which airline has chosen to fill its home tarmac with decommissioned, sun-baked Boeings and Airbuses when these hulls should really be sitting mothballed in Jordan or Arizona and away from its newer fleet? Talk about a brand killer.

10.
What is the most efficient, perfectly designed, best little hub in the Gulf, and will be even better when the home carrier takes delivery of more long-haul aircraft?

P.S. Bonus question: Who used to fly 747s from London to their base at the far end of the Med and had Sunday roast beef trolley service, complete with dangerously long carving utensils? I’m talking very early 1990s here.

Send your answers to tb@monocle.com and if you’re enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’, click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.