Over the past couple of years we’ve had a chance to visit a bunch of museums dedicated to aviation and flight.
Aviation museums always seem to feel quite unique compared to your typical museum. They can also be a lot of fun for everyone. The best part is that many of them are interactive and you can even get the chance to go on some of the planes on display.
Here are the aviation museums that we’ve visited over the past couple of years:
- The Barbados Concorde Experience
- South Dakota Air & Space Museum
- Mitchell Gallery of Flight at General Mitchell Airport
- Frontiers of Flight Museum at Dallas Love Field
I came across a slide show from CNNTravel featuring the World’s 14 Best Aviation Museums. The museums listed sounds pretty amazing and I would love to visit some of them in the future.
Of the 14 museums listed, 5 are located in the United States. I visited one of the U.S. museums (in bold) that made the list many years back and I’d be willing to bet that many of you have too.
Here is the list of Best Aviation Museums:
- Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum Washington, D.C.
- Imperial War Museum Duxford- Duxford, UK
- National Museum of the USAF- Dayton, Ohio
- Future of Flight Center/ Boeing Tour- Everett, Washington
- French Air and Space Museum- Paris, France
- State Aviation Museum of Ukraine- Kiev, Ukraine
- Pima Air & Space Museum- Tucson, Arizona
- Polish Aviation Museum- Krakow, Poland
- China Aviation Museum- Beijing, China
- Canada Aviation and Space Museum- Ottawa, Canada
- Red Bull Hangar-7- Salzburg, Austria
- Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum- Alice Springs, Australia
- Central Museum of Air Forces- Moscow, Russia
- Palm Springs Air Museum- Palm Springs, California
Have you been to any of the aviation museums that made the list? ? If so, which did you visit and did you find it worthwhile?
Find out about each of the World’s 14 Best Aviation Museums HERE.
We just visited the Palm Springs Aviation Museum and it is a gem!!! The volunteers are so knowledgable, the hangers stocked with everything imaginable and the tour inside the B-17 with Gil was quite something.
The best value for your money… Imagining you are a 17 year old gunner on that plane.
Aldo, San Diego Air and Space is a treasure too.
In Europe Sinsheim and Speyer museum with Concorde, Tu 144, Buran Shuttle and much more
Thanks everyone for all of the great recommendations! I’m definitely looking forward to visitng more aviation musuems in the future!
Pima Air and Space. Absolutely worth it! It goes on forever! So much stuff!
You all have forgotten about one of the true treasures of them all. The McMinnville, Oregon museum houses The Spruce Goose, a blackbird, and a host of excellent vintage aircraft and space craft. It also has a 747 sitting in its front yard and another in its side yard that has been turned into a water park. The Spruce Goose is amazing and you can now get access to the cockpit-which affords ridiculous views of the wings and fuselage. An amazing place.
Two more great ones in the USA:
(1) Museum of Flight – Boeing Field Seattle (not to be confused with the Everett facility), which has Air Force One, a Concorde, B47, SR71, and hundreds of other planes
(2) Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Museum at DC’s Dulles Airport, which has the larger aircraft (like the Enola Gay) that don’t fit at the other museum on the Mall
Also, if you time your visit to the Udvar-Hazy Museum with certain wind direction, you can watch a lot of the aircraft taking off/landing at Dulles. If you have a few days to choose from, might want to wait until there is a good chance for those runways to be active.
I’ve been to the smithsonian.
I personally like the Strategic Air Command Mueseum outside Omaha and the Pensacola NAS museum in Florida.
You left out the museum at College Park MD where the Wright brothers brought their flying machines to show the US Army.
A little small, but full of real history