Museum of Flying, Santa Monica

I always enjoy visiting aviation museums, and I enjoyed visiting the Museum of Flying at the Santa Monica Airport. It's a relatively small museum, and the price of entry is reasonable. There's a full size DC 3 mounted on a column outside the entrance so the museum is difficult to miss. Inside, there are full size planes and models. Each full size plane has explanatory materials. They even have an actual WWI Fokker triplane. You don't see them very often. Two things I always enjoy seeing in aviation museums are theaters with aviation videos and flight simulators. This museum has both, but the theater wasn't actually running the videos, and the flight simulator is live only on weekends. I took off one star because of these deficiencies. I recommend that you visit this museum on a weekend.

Small but great aviation museum! The entrance to park is the immediate left after the Donald Douglas Loop S intersection, in front of the outddor aircraft. The rel gem of this place is the detail and history pieces they have. There is a great display of model aircraft including an historic Pan Am aircraft. The museum is 2 floors, with the actual table from the former board room. amazing experience. 4 stars as the gift shop wasn't that great, and the inner cockpit of the Fed Ex aircraft is still closed off, with COVID being cited as the reason.

This was a fun place! We chose this location because of the VR experience that was featured online, and the actual airplane cockpit that you can go into. Aaaaaand, both were not open that day (a Saturday). That was a let-down, but there were many other things that we busied ourselves with. There were old types and styles of airplane seats to sit in and to see the evolution of the design was a neat experience. I didn’t get his name, but I assume he is the owner was a very nice man. He took time out of his duties to talk to us about some questions we had, he taught us about ejection seats, and just overall provided a nice conversation. Unfortunately, it turns out the reason the two features weren’t open that day is due to being short-staffed. The wall protruding cockpit has to be manned by its own employee as when left unmanned, visitors tend to damage things and people can get rowdy. It’s unfortunate this is the case for him, because he truly has a clear passion for this and his knowledge is immense; his heart is in this and so many people would gain from that.

What a cool gem in SM! We learned lots of stories about Douglas and it’s history in Santa Monica. The exhibition is not too big, but a manageable size for a 2 to 3 hours time to see many cool displays/replicas. Im not so into aircrafts, but it was really enjoyable. Perfect spot for family as well as individuals!

Great museum with enthusiastic helpful people working there. My toddler has a great time too trying out the Boeing 727 cockpit.