What’s your old-time flying score? There was a time when you walked out
onto the ramp to reach your airplane (we still do in certain airports :-)), the gate agent wrote your boarding pass by hand, and the ashtray in your armrest was there because you were expected to use it. None of that was exotic. It was just how flying worked.

This quiz is sixty of those things — from the terminal, the cabin, the
booking process, and the particular world of non-rev travel. Tick everything
you’ve actually done. The rarer the memory, the more it counts, and at the
end you’ll get a score out of 166 and a rank somewhere between App-Era
Rookie and Living Aviation Museum.

It takes about two minutes. Airline employees tend to score highest;
the last section is one only our people can fill in. Please share with your friends and colleagues.

By Kerwin McKenzie,
founder of Passrider.com — flying since 1980, 211 airlines flown, 145 countries
and territories visited, and 16.5 years working inside the airline industry.
Published 2 August 2026 · Last updated 27 August 2026.

Still flying standby today?

Remembering how it used to work is one thing; making your flights now is
another. These are the tools I keep pointed at that problem:

• Nonrev Destination Intel
  — how likely you are to clear, destination by destination, with monthly
  load patterns and hub strategy.
• Airline Network Explorer
  — map out hub connections and find the routing nobody else is listing on.
• Fifth Freedom Flight Finder
  — the partner metal and fifth freedom routes that often carry less
  non-rev competition.
• Airport Sleep Finder
  — lounges, sleep pods and nearby hotels for when the loads collapse.
• Flight Loads
  — check loads on other airlines before you commit to a plan.

And if you’re planning a specific trip, the region playbooks go deeper:
the Asia Non-Rev Playbook,
the Europe Non-Rev Planning Playbook,
and the Caribbean Non-Rev Planning Playbook.

What did I miss?

Sixty items is not the whole of aviation history. If there’s something
you did that isn’t on the list — an airline that no longer exists, a
piece of cabin equipment nobody under forty would recognize, a pass policy that
would never survive today — leave it in the comments. The best ones go into
the next round.

The full list — all sixty

The quiz above scores these interactively. Here they are in plain form, for
anyone who would rather just read the list.

Airport & Boarding

Before the terminal became a shopping mall with runways.

• Walked across the ramp to your plane — no jetbridge
• Boarded by the rear airstairs
• Got a handwritten boarding pass
• Held a paper ticket with carbon flight coupons you couldn’t afford to lose
• Had a ticket endorsed over to another airline
• Met someone at the gate — or got met at the gate
• Cleared security with your shoes on and nobody checking ID
• Watched a split-flap board clack its way through the schedule
• Watched planes from an airport observation deck
• Checked in at a downtown city ticket office (deep cut)
• Fed coins into an airport pay phone
• Got paged over the airport PA
• Rode a Dulles mobile lounge out to your plane (deep cut)
• Stood at the podium listening for your name
• Had a skycap write your bag tag by hand

Onboard

When the seat pitch and the silverware were both real.

• Flew a trijet — 727, DC-10, L-1011 or MD-11
• Flew with a flight engineer in the cockpit
• Climbed the spiral staircase on a 747
• Flew Concorde (deep cut)
• Sat in the smoking section
• Stubbed one out in the armrest ashtray
• Ate a real meal in coach with metal cutlery
• Answered the question “chicken or beef?”
• Got a hot towel in economy
• Wore the hollow-tube pneumatic headphones
• Watched one movie on one overhead screen, like it or not
• Turned the audio channel dial in your armrest
• Made a call from a seatback Airfone
• Read SkyMall cover to cover
• Got plastic wings pinned on you
• Visited the cockpit in flight
• Collected coins in the barf bag for UNICEF (deep cut)
• Finished a crossword someone else had already started
• Flew a plane with open overhead shelves instead of bins (deep cut)
• Had a full bar cart — and an ice cream sundae cart

Booking & Tech

Everything that now takes eleven seconds used to take a week.

• Called the airline’s 800 number to book
• Booked through a travel agent
• Had a paper ticket mailed to your house
• Picked up a ticket at will-call
• Reconfirmed your flight 72 hours before departure
• Bought a fare that required a Saturday night stay
• Paid more for a one-way than a round-trip
• Carried a printed OAG or an airline paper timetable
• Mailed in boarding pass stubs to claim missing miles
• Got a mileage statement in the mail
• Printed your boarding pass at home on letter paper
• Used a check-in kiosk instead of your phone
• Have never once used an app to board a plane

Non-Rev Life

The part only our people can score on.

• Wore a jacket and tie to non-rev
• Got turned away at the gate over the dress code
• Listed for a flight on a green-screen terminal
• Carried a paper space-available pass signed by a supervisor (deep cut)
• Wrote out a ZED ticket by hand (deep cut)
• Rode the cockpit jumpseat as an employee
• Checked loads by calling a recorded phone line
• Handed someone a paper buddy pass coupon
• Held a pass on an airline that no longer exists
• Survived two mergers on the same seniority number
• Slept in a terminal because the loads collapsed
• Flew standby in full uniform

Common questions about the score

How is the old-time flying score calculated?

Each of the sixty items carries a weight rather than counting as one point.
Fairly recent things are worth 1, classic ones 2, genuinely vintage ones 3, and
the rarest — the deep cuts — are worth 5. A perfect score is 166.
Your rank is based on the percentage you score, not the raw number.

What is a “deep cut”?

A deep cut is one of the seven rarest items on the list: flying Concorde,
checking in at a downtown city ticket office, riding a Dulles mobile lounge,
collecting coins in the barf bag for UNICEF, flying an aircraft with open
overhead shelves instead of bins, writing out a ZED ticket by hand, and carrying
a paper space-available pass signed by a supervisor. Each is worth 5 points and
they are listed back to you at the end.

What are the ranks?

There are seven, by percentage: App-Era Rookie, Ramp Rat, Standby Regular,
Seasoned Non-Rev, Silver Wings, Golden Age Survivor and Living Aviation Museum.

Who scores highest?

Airline employees, consistently. The final section covers non-rev travel
specifically — jacket-and-tie dress codes, listing on a green-screen
terminal, checking loads on a recorded phone line, riding the cockpit jumpseat
— and those items are effectively unavailable to anyone who has not worked
for an airline.

About the author

Kerwin McKenzie founded Passrider.com in April 2002 to give airline employees and their travel companions one place to plan a standby trip. He is an early-retired airline employee who spent 16.5 years in the industry across four airlines, and holds a Master’s degree in
Aeronautical Sciences from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

He has been flying since 1980, has flown 211 airlines, and has visited 145 countries and territories. Most of the items in this quiz are not research; they are things he did, in the era they were normal.