View source for Talk:Pilots Federation/@comment-173.179.88.88-20161211131348/@comment-82.46.123.131-20170713110035

It's actually this: passanger transport missions, where you take a passenger to a location and drop them off, count towards trade rank. Passenger sightseeing missions or data collection missions, where you take them somewhere and then return them to where you picked them up, count towards exporation rank. You can tell by the recommend rank in the mission descriptions.