The Museum of Flight

11/04/2023

Where will you take FLATstronaut? In celebration of the Museum’s ART+FLIGHT exhibit, you can make your own FLATstronaut and take them on special outings and trips to your favorite art- or flight-related spot and share them with the Museum! Each month from June through December, we’ll select a winner from all of the FLATstronaut photos shared on Facebook and Instagram that month using the hashtag .

Remember to tag us!

Print out the template and get the details here ➡ https://tmof.click/3IRVCQ6

11/04/2023

Tomorrow!!

Held at The Museum of Flight, 9404 E Marginal Way S, Seattle, WA 98108. Bookmarks & Landmarks is a book group event with a local, historic twist. Read one or all of the titles then visit these historic sites for a program including guest speakers, special tours, and librarian-led book discussions. F...

11/03/2023

The Blue Marble.

Image Description: Planet Earth as seen from space on the Apollo 17 mission. Oceans stretch from one end of the view to another, with the landmasses of Madagascar and Sub-Saharan Africa prominent under a swirl of clouds. Antarctica can just be seen at the bottom of the planet.

Image Credit: Public Domain via NASA

11/03/2023

Look who just dropped by, the Boeing 787 Number 4! It seems like old times, and notice how the pilots slowed down in front of the Museum. Museum PR Guy thinks they did that just to wave at him! Ha ha ha!

11/03/2023

Were you at Boeing Field for this grand return?

You can find the first ever Boeing 727 at The Museum of Flight today!

Now that's a throwback! 📰

In November 1963, a Boeing 727 completed a 76,000-mile world tour to 26 countries. After its journey touring the 🌎, the airplane landed at Boeing Field, greeted by a crowd ready to welcome the passengers who made aviation history.

(Boeing Archives photo.)

11/01/2023

Planning for retirement can be tough! The Museum of Flight is pleased to offer a series of free, lunch-and-learn workshops to our community so that you can enjoy the benefits of your hard work when you retire. The next session, led by Chris Waclawik and Mike Ersser from Merriman Wealth Management, is Thursday, November 9 at noon on Zoom. Details at the link!

Choosing between a monthly pension benefit vs. a one-time lump-sum benefit can be tricky. Chris Waclawik and Mike Ersser from Merriman Wealth Management, will help you understand the pros and cons of each option to guide you in making the best decision.  

11/01/2023

Mary Golda Ross, the first known Native American female aerospace engineer, had a career that spanned air and space. A member of the Cherokee Nation and born in Oklahoma in 1908, she was educated in Tahlequah, a capital city for the Cherokee. She entered college in Tahlequah at age 16, graduating with a degree in mathematics, though she found herself especially drawn to astronomy courses. After working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she joined Lockheed as a human computer on the P-38 Lightning project soon after the United States entered World War II. During the post-war layoffs, Lockheed retained her and paid for her further education in engineering.

Ross was an early engineer at Lockheed’s Skunk Works, which developed the SR-71 Blackbird, among other iconic aircraft. She was the only Indigenous person and the only woman on the engineering team when she joined. Her work focused on rocketry and satellites, and she even helped author the NASA Planetary Flight Handbook, Vol. III. She continued to mentor Native American girls interested in engineering for 30 years after she retired.

Image Description:

1. Black and white photo of Mary Golda Ross working with drafting tools at a desk.

2. A Lockheed P-38 Lightning on display at The Museum of Flight

Image Credit:
1. Courtesy of Northeastern State University Archives, Tahlequah, Oklahoma

2. The Museum of Flight/Sean Mobley

10/31/2023

Happy Halloween from The Museum of Flight!

Image Description: Photograph of the nose art for "Wingless Witch," a Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft, circa 1944-1945. The art depicts a witch riding a bomb.

Image Credit: The Donald K. Prothero World War II Photographs/The Museum of Flight

10/31/2023

It's as though the weather this morning knew it was Halloween!

Image Credit: The Museum of Flight/Sean Mobley

10/31/2023

Happy Howloween! Hope you have a purrrrfectly spooky day. Enjoy some of our staff's pets in pilot costumes.

Yes, the cat is plotting revenge for this.

10/30/2023

It’s Checklist Day! We’re showcasing some interesting checklists from our collection today.

The Lear Fan 2100 is a stand-out aircraft in our collection, both for its unusual pusher aesthetic and the story behind its construction. We recently digitized the William P. and Moya Olsen Lear Papers, and among those items we found a copy of the checklist used for the first run up of the Lear Fan on December 25, 1980. Of particular note are the handwritten additions and alterations to the list.

Check out more of the William P. and Moya Olsen Lear Papers for free on our Digital Collection ➡️ https://tmof.click/409RiTy

10/30/2023

It’s Checklist Day! We’re showcasing some interesting checklists from our collection today.

One of the most common questions we get in our space exhibits is “how do astronauts go to the bathroom?” There’s a checklist for that! This page from the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Joint Operations Checklist used by American astronaut Deke Slayton gives the step-by-step ops for going number one.

You can read the rules for number two, along with more highbrow stuff like Apollo-Soyuz docking procedures, for free on our Digital Collection ➡️ https://tmof.click/3MexKHL

Image Credit: The Deke Slayton ASTP Joint Operations Checklist/The Museum of Flight

10/30/2023

It’s Checklist Day! If aviation’s got a lot of anything, it’s checklists. We’re showcasing some interesting checklists from our collection today.

Have you ever seen a checklist for a Douglas C-47 Skytrain? This one comes from the gooney bird training manual circa 1940s. As with many publications of that era, the illustrations really help make the text more interesting.

Check out the whole manual for free on our Digital Collection ➡️ https://tmof.click/3MdTtzI

Image Credit: Manuals Collection/The Museum of Flight Library Collection

10/29/2023

Science is fun with a Mad Scientist!!

10/29/2023

Hello 8-Bit Brass Band at The Museum of Fright!

10/29/2023

We’re just getting started. Come take a spin at The Museum of Fright!

10/28/2023

On this day in history in 1969, NASA test pilot Bill Dana flew the HL-10 lifting body to Mach 1.58 at over 60,000 feet. The craft was air launched from a B-52 mothership and would then fly back to land.

Dana is pictured here next to the HL-10 as a B-52 flies overhead.

10/28/2023

Tonight, The Museum of Flight honors two new recipients of the Pathfinder Award. The awards honor individuals with ties to the Pacific Northwest who have made significant contributions to the development of the aerospace industry. Please join us in congratulating the 2023 Pathfinder class.

Gary Lai - Category: Engineering
Ray Conner - Category: Manufacturing and Operations

10/27/2023

The Museum of Fright is this Sunday, October 29 from 10 AM to 3 PM. We’ll have face painting, family STEM workshops, wild science shows and more! Here are some of our favorite costumes from last year. We can’t wait to see everyone’s creativity on Sunday!

Kids in costume get in free!

10/27/2023

For some, it’s just another takeoff. For Museum PR Guy it’s “another takeoff!” And today’s crisp, clear autumn air is very refreshing, so he was happy to get away from his desk.

10/27/2023

It’s Spooky Season! Take a walk through history back to a classic Halloween radio broadcast that legends say scared the whole country. Dive into the history of radio and Martians in this classic episode of The Flight Deck, The Museum of Flight’s podcast.

Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio broadcast ‘War of the Worlds’ used cutting-edge audio technology to convince listeners that planet Earth was under attack by Martians. This week we find out how a simple mistranslation contributed to this fear of a Martian invasion and the strange set of circu...

10/27/2023

Today is World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. Preserved historical films and audio recordings can make the past feel alive in ways photos and text cannot. The Museum of Flight has digitized hundreds of aviation- and space-related video and audio recordings, from film of the Associated Women Pilots of Boeing Field goofing off on Boeing Field in their spare time to stunning front-row footage of the Apollo 13 splashdown to audio interviews with World War II fighter aces sharing their stories and more.

All of this is available for free in The Museum of Flight’s Digital Collections. Start exploring now! https://tmof.click/46FBVVx

10/26/2023

The Museum of Flight proudly holds a 4-Star rating with Charity Navigator. This top rank means we continually demonstrate a commitment to community accountability, transparency, and strong financial health.

10/26/2023

Concorde.

It’s got a droop snoot.

Image Description: A Concorde lands at Farnborough Airport in England in 1974. Its snoot is fully drooped.

Image Credit: Steve Fitzgerald

10/25/2023

Today is International Artist Day! Celebrate with a trip to The Museum of Flight to see our temporary exhibition, ART+FLIGHT. The exhibit c***ects our region’s vibrant arts scene with our rich history of aerospace.

Get your tickets now ➡️ https://artandflight.museumofflight.org/

10/25/2023

Who flew it better, Buoy or Blitz?

Seattle Kraken Seattle Seahawks

Image Credit: The Museum of Flight/Sean Mobley

10/25/2023

Check out this vintage aircraft ad all the way from 1956!

The Plane of Tomorrow... Here Today, in our Vintage Airplane Ad of the Week from 1956, highlighting the new fiberglas Taylorcraft!

(check out Wikipedia for the history of fiberglass, which explains the spelling with one "s").

10/24/2023

On October 24, 2003, the British Airways Concorde G-BOAG made its final commercial flight. This flight also marked the end of Concorde’s commercial service. A few weeks later, the plane would arrive at The Museum of Flight.

What are your Concorde memories?

Image Description: The cockpit of G-BOAG.

Image Credit: The Museum of Flight/Ted Huetter

10/24/2023

Podcast Alert 🎙

X-15 historian, transgender activist, Air Force veteran and science educator Michelle Evans joins us on the first episode of Season 3 of The Flight Deck, the podcast of The Museum of Flight. She shares about her time stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, where she was a specialist working with SRAMs (Short-Range Attack Missile). Listen on your favorite podcatcher or at the link!

Explore the story of Michelle Evans, a transgender Air Force veteran. Learn how her time in the Air Force intersected with her identity as a trans woman.

10/23/2023

Big thanks to Blitz, the Seahawks and Delta Air Lines! During our Free First Thursday on October 5, they were on hand to distribute hundreds of STEM-focused children’s books to families from across the community! Thank you and Go Hawks!

Seattle Seahawks Blitz the Seahawk

Image Credit: The Museum of Flight/Julie Williams

10/23/2023

We have a winner! The people have spoken. The final count was neck-and-neck all day yesterday, but after totaling everything up from across all our social media channels, the smolchonk Caproni Stipa just barely beat the gigantic Airbus BelugaXL in a 260 to 252 vote photo finish. This was an 'every vote counts' situation. We've included a second picture of the Stipa from the front so you can see the source of the chonk.

We hope you enjoyed our first ever Chonky Plane Week, and that you learned something new as well. If you'd like us to repeat this next year after Katmai National Park & Preserve's iconic Fat Bear Week, let us know! And if you have ideas for other airplanes that should be included in a future match up, or ideas for other fun brackets you can leave them in the comments. Thank you to everyone who voted!

10/22/2023

We recently had an inquiry from a very enthusiastic young researcher who is a person with blindness. A big fan of the Lockheed YO-3A, he asked if we could help him find a model, but those we did find were quite expensive. Our Exhibits team recently got a 3-D printer and decided to try to create some sort of model for the young man. One of our Exhibits folks, Tad, produced this 2-D tile which includes three touch-outline views of the aircraft and a Braille description along the top. It’s a prototype and we’ve asked the young person for feedback so we can continue to improve. Ideally, this could be the start of a new way to serve patrons, particularly those who have low-vision or are blind. We offer special tours but many people do not live close enough so this could be a viable tool to help broaden access and engage aviation enthusiasts, regardless of their location or ability.

Image description: A gray plastic square tile with a black bar of raised Braille text across the top features three different outlines of the YO-3A. The views are from the side, the front, and a top-down view.

Photo credit: The Museum of Flight staff

10/22/2023

It's smolchonk vs. megachonk. The Grand Chonk Showdown. All week, we've run the bracket across our social media platforms, and the people have spoken. After quarter- and semi-finals, we have our last matchup.

The Caproni Stipa and the Airbus BelugaXL. Two aircraft with very different stories. The Stipa was an experiment, an attempt at building an aircraft around a propeller. The BelugaXL is a tried-and-true contender, one of several mega cargo planes flying around the world today.

Who should take home the crown and be named "Chonky Plane of 2023?" Leave your vote in the comments.

10/21/2023

On October 21, 1947, the Northrup YB-49 flying wing made its first flight. Led in design by Jack Northrop himself, the idea behind a flying wing was that the lack of a fuselage meant minimal drag. The YB-49 was a turbojet aircraft, essentially an attempt to modernize the earlier, propellor-powered prototype YB-35. The project was ultimately cancelled. The exact reasons remain contested, with Jack Northrop claiming it was killed for political reasons, while others have stated that budget, poor performance (one test aircraft crashed, killing five on board), project delays and perceived superiority of other aircraft designs were the cause.

Image Description: A line of nine YB-35s in the process of being converted into YB-49s.

Image Credit: Public Domain via U.S. Air Force

10/21/2023

Meet the author today at the Museum at 2pm!

Widely recognized as a military aviation trailblazer for women, Eileen A. Bjorkman authored a new book looking at the fight female pilots took to enter combat.

10/21/2023

The last semi-finals matchup of Chonky Plane Week 2023 is here! We've got the Bréguet 763, a hearty passenger plane that flew mostly for Air France, up against the Airbus Beluga, a cargo plane that transports massive airplane parts across the world. Which plane should advance to the Conky Plane finals? Leave your vote in the comments!