Qualla: Aviodrome

Aviodrome: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NatiSythen, CC BY-SA 3.0. In December 2004, residents of Amsterdam's western canals stepped outside their houses to watch a Boeing 747 float past their front doors. The wings, engines, and tail had been removed and stacked beside the fuselage to clear the bridges, and the jet was riding a barge at walking pace through the night, its blue KLM livery lit by streetlights. The plane had been sold for one symbolic euro to the Aviodrome aviation museum at Lelystad Airport, and the runway at Lelystad was too short to land it, so the 747 went by water. That kind of solution is characteristic of the place that bought it. The Aviodrome is a museum that does aviation history with the same patient, slightly improbable craftsmanship the Netherlands brings to everything else.

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Image: NatiSythen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aviodrome: A Terminal Rebuilt From Memory

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stahlkocher, CC BY-SA 3.0. The entrance to the museum is not really an entrance; it is a replica of the original Schiphol Airport terminal as it stood in 1928, when air travel was still a wealthy person's adventure and Schiphol was a grass field with a handful of wooden buildings. The replica was built whe...

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Image: Stahlkocher | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aviodrome: Connie and the Uiver

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stahlkocher, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two aircraft anchor the collection. The Lockheed L-749 Constellation, called Connie by everyone who works on her, came back to the Netherlands in 2002 after years of storage in the American desert. She wears the cream and blue KLM colors she would have worn in the 1950s, when the...

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Image: Stahlkocher | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aviodrome: Fokker's Country

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JIP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Anthony Fokker built airplanes in this country and Aviodrome curates his legacy: an S-12, an S-14 Machtrainer, two F-27 Friendships, an F-50 prototype, a Fokker 100. One of the F-27s is the oldest series-produced Friendship still flying, bought in Australia in 2004 and painted in...

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Image: JIP | CC BY-SA 4.0

Aviodrome: From Lilienthal to the Huygens Probe

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dutchsatellites, Public domain. Beyond the famous airframes, the collection sprawls into corners. A replica of Otto Lilienthal's hang glider from the 1890s, the original of which crashed and killed him. A MiG-21, a Saab Viggen, a Hawker Sea Fury, a Junkers Ju 52 built under license in Spain. A Wright Flyer repl...

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Image: Dutchsatellites | Public domain