- Realizing she would need help, she recruited Fred Noonan, an experienced navigator who was charting air routes across the Pacific for the fledgling commercial airline industry. -Why is "was charting" incorrect and why is "charted" correct. Please explain
“Cheated”?
What’s is cheating? Talking about test questions or using parent in a SN when you are a kid ? 
The test question part could be a practice workbook. That’s OK. I suspect there was an autocorrect and “cheated” was supposed to be “charted”. I will edit to fix.
Try to read the passage around the sentence you included above. “Was charting” implies Noonan was charting when she recruited him. “Charted” implies he did that in the past.
I agree with @xxluvforeverxx It has to do with verb tense. It should be past tense.
Which isn’t wrong in this stand-alone sentence. In context, of course, it might be, but in this sentence as it appears here, it’s an acceptable choice.