Museum of Flight
January 31, 2008 by jwalkden
Filed under Seattle Museums
Washington State has nine museums that are dedicated to aviation and are fully recognized by the American Association of Museum. It’s home to the famous Boeing company. Seattle takes pride in displaying some of the many historic and significant aircraft and spacecraft in the nation.
It’s no surprise that the Museum of Flight is one of the great places to go to experience machines of flight.
The Museum of Flight is one of the largest air and space museums in the country with over 150 collections of air and spacecraft of historic significance, as well as the Red Barn, which is the original manufacturing plant of Boeing Company. They attract over 400,000 visitors a year.
Some of the collections from past to present include the first jet Air Force One, a Boeing VC-137B that was delivered to President Eisenhower in 1959. A Boeing Model 80A-1, which was the first aircraft acquired by the museum, was found from a junk heap of Anchorage, Alaska. The Caproni Ca 20, which was the world’s first purpose-built fighter plane. A British Airways Concorde G-BOAG, which was the last Concorde to make a commercial flight and the only one in the West Coast. It is only one of the four outside of Europe.
Imagine yourself inside the only supersonic Concorde on the west coast. Imagine what it’s like to be on that flight. Or take a wild flight in the X-Pilot motion simulator.
The museum offers rare, one-of-a-kind documents of the Wright Brothers and how these two changed the world today with their vision and dreams of flight.
They are open daily from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and every first Thursday of the month until 9 p.m.
The Museum of Flight is located just 10 minutes from Downtown Seattle and Sea-Tac Airport; exit 158 off I-5 or take Metro Bus 174. There are road signs that will point the way.
For more information call 206.764.5720.
