A couple of months ago we visited for a second time the Luchtvaart Museum Aviodrome, the Aviation museum of The Netherlands, located in Lelystadt, a village on reclaimed land of the former Zuiderzee. The village was founded in 1967 and named after Cornelis Lely, the civil engineer behind the Afsluitdijk dyke. Shortly after, the construction of a local airport started and the first flights took place in 1971, in which today is the biggest general aviation airport in The Netherlands.
The museum is organized around 4 sections: the main indoor exhibition with a chronological tour through aviation history with a particular focus on Dutch contributions, the outdoors exhibition with a former KLM Boeing 747 open for visits as the main attraction, a hangar with some old aircraft with a Douglas DC-2 as main attraction and a replica of how Schiphol airport looked like in 1928.
Indoor exhibition
The main exhibition starts with the dawn of aviation from Da Vinci, to Montgolfier, to the Wright brothers, including some replicas and plenty of interactive games for kids to play with and understand some basics of aerodynamic, flight control, etc. Then the focus of the museum is on the Dutch side of aviation with the main characters of Anthony Fokker (aircraft designer), Frederick (Frits) Koolhoven (an automobile engineer turned aircraft designer) and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines with a focus on its first president Albert Plesman (who remained its CEO for 35 years until his death).
Some of the aircraft in the collection that I liked the most were the ones below:
Outdoors exhibition (747)
In the outdoors exhibition there are a few aircraft like a Fokker 100, a DC-4, an Antonov An-2, but the star is a former KLM Boeing 747 in combi configuration, where visitors can walk through the cargo deck, the economy and business classes and take a look into the flight deck. I leave some pictures below.
Hangar (DC-2)
The main item in the hangar is the DC-2 called “Uiver” that won the handicap competition of the MacRobertson Air Race (to commemorate Melbourne centenary celebrations) flying from London to Melbourne in 1934 (and came second in speed) covering 19,877km in 90 hours and 17 minutes. (The one in the exhibition is not the original Uiver as it crashed years after the race in operation; but another DC-2 restored and painted in the same colors)
Schiphol airport 1928 replica
I leave some pictures below of what was the hall with the counters of the different airlines, a schedule of KLM route to Batavia and some posters with references to the legendary ghost ship The Flying Dutchman.
The museum is great. For the international visitor it misses some panels’ translations. But you can easily follow most of it and spend as many hours as you please.
The Blog by Javier 