The Museum of Flight, Aviation museum in Tukwila, United States.
The Museum of Flight is an aviation museum at the southern end of King County International Airport (Boeing Field) in Tukwila, Washington. Its campus covers more than 60,000 m² and holds over 175 aircraft and spacecraft, among them the first flight-worthy Boeing 747, a Boeing 787-8, a British Airways Concorde and the Lockheed M-21 Blackbird. The T.A. Wilson Great Gallery, a space-frame lattice under a glass roof by engineer Jack Christiansen, hangs more than 20 aircraft, including a Douglas DC-3 of over nine tons.
The institution was founded in 1965 and later moved into the original Boeing manufacturing building, known as the Red Barn, dating back to 1909. The facility grew over the decades as more hangar and gallery space was added to house the expanding collection.
The museum's name comes from its focus on flight, and its K-12 programs serve more than 140,000 students a year through a Challenger Learning Center, an Aviation Learning Center and the ACE summer camp. The center includes a mock-up NASA mission control where students run a simulated Space Shuttle mission.
Visitors should wear comfortable shoes, as the hangars and galleries sit far apart and cover multiple floors. Simulators and movies run on different schedules, so it helps to ask what is available when you arrive.
Visitors can walk through the cabin of the first presidential Air Force One and see how the interior was arranged for heads of state. The facility also allows access inside a Concorde, letting guests stroll through the narrow fuselage of the supersonic jet.
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