The Museum of Flight

Every jumbo you have ever photographed at the fence traces back to a single aircraft. Its registration is N7470, inside Boeing it was known as RA001, and today it sits not in Everett, where it was built, but a few kilometers south of Seattle: at the Museum of Flight on the edge of Boeing Field. Parked next to it are a Concorde, the first jet-powered Air Force One and the prototypes of the 727, 737 and 787. If you love airliners, you will hardly find another museum with this much original Boeing history in one spot.

A museum that grew from a single aircraft

The museum’s roots are humble. In 1965, aviation enthusiasts in Seattle founded the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation. Their first goal was a single aircraft: a Boeing 80A-1 built in 1929, a three-engine passenger biplane that the group had tracked down in Anchorage, Alaska. The restoration dragged on for 16 years. Today the aircraft is the only surviving Boeing 80A – and the museum that grew up around it is one of the largest aviation and space museums in the world.

A milestone came in 1975 with the purchase of the Red Barn. The red wooden building from 1909 was Boeing’s first factory. The museum acquired it from the Port of Seattle for a symbolic dollar and had it brought up the Duwamish River on a barge to its present site; it has been open to visitors since 1983. On July 10, 1987, the big glass hall followed, the T.A. Wilson Great Gallery – opened by Vice President George Bush together with four Mercury astronauts.

The museum is a private nonprofit institution and accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. According to Wikipedia, around 465,000 visitors came in 2024.

RA001: the world’s first jumbo

On September 30, 1968, an aircraft rolled out of the hangar in Everett that was so big Boeing had built a new factory just for it. The first Boeing 747 carried the factory designation RA001, serial number 20235 and the name City of Everett. On February 9, 1969, it took to the air for the first time. In the cockpit sat Boeing’s chief pilot Jack Waddell, test pilot Brien Wygle and flight engineer Jess Wallick.

RA001 took part in the test program until the US aviation authority FAA certified the type at the end of December 1969. No airline ever received it. The type designation 747-121 does point to Pan Am as the launch customer – the digits 21 are Boeing’s customer code for the airline – but the prototype stayed with Boeing its whole life. How Pan Am got the jumbo rolling in the first place is told in the article on the history of the Boeing 747.

A testbed instead of an airliner

After certification, RA001 was not retired but began a second life as a flying laboratory. Boeing used it to test new technology and new engines for other airliners. According to the museum, this included the Pratt & Whitney PW4000, which later hung on the Boeing 777, among others. In between, the jumbo sat in storage in Las Vegas for several years. On April 6, 1995, it flew one last time, to the museum at Boeing Field, to which Boeing donated it – still in its test configuration.

Restoration under open skies

Decades in the damp climate of the Northwest had left their mark. In the summer of 2012, the museum decided to restore it, a job that took just under two years. The teams worked right at the parking spot: they repainted the jumbo on the spot and overhauled the interior. In 2014, RA001 reopened to visitors. Afterward, the Aviation Pavilion got its big roof, which today protects the jumbo and its neighbors from the rain.

RA001 has a special meaning for spotters. The jumbo is disappearing from scheduled service; at many airlines, the farewell is long past, as the article on the end of the four-engine jets shows. All the more reason to see the aircraft where it all began. You can find the type itself in the profile of the Boeing 747-100.

The Aviation Pavilion: prototypes under one roof

The Aviation Pavilion sits on the western part of the grounds, on the other side of East Marginal Way. According to the museum, it is a covered, open-sided exhibition area of roughly three acres, or about 1.2 hectares, with 19 airliners and military aircraft. Its theme is the development of large aircraft from the 1930s to today.

Alongside RA001, it gathers several “firsts” in Boeing history:

• the first Boeing 727, the prototype of the three-engine family – more in the profile of the Boeing 727-100,
• the first Boeing 737, which after its Boeing years flew as a test aircraft for NASA for a long time – the page on the Boeing 737-100 describes the type,
• the third prototype of the Boeing 787-8 with registration N787BX – the production version is in the profile of the Boeing 787-8,
• the airliners of the 1930s, a Boeing 247D and a Douglas DC-2.

Military aircraft add to this, such as the B-17F Flying Fortress, the B-29 Superfortress and the B-47 Stratojet, as well as fighters from the Korean War to the Gulf War. One special feature is the air cargo exhibit, built from the fuselage of a former FedEx 727 freighter.

Concorde G-BOAG

According to Wikipedia, the Concorde in Seattle is one of only four Concordes on display outside Europe. G-BOAG flew for British Airways from 1980, and it completed its last scheduled flight in October 2003. On November 5, 2003, it carried a crew from New York to Seattle – in 3 hours, 55 minutes and 2 seconds according to the museum, a good hour and a half of it supersonic over the sparsely populated north of Canada. The profile of the Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde describes the type; the article on the Concorde covers the history of the supersonic era.

SAM 970: the first jet Air Force One

The VC-137B with the callsign SAM 970 is a military variant of the Boeing 707 and was the first US presidential aircraft with jet engines. It landed at Boeing Field in June 1996, and the museum opened it to visitors in October of the same year. The page on the Boeing VC-137 introduces the family of government 707s; the article on the Boeing 707 covers the development of Boeing’s first jetliner.

Great Gallery, Red Barn and World War aircraft

The main building is on the east side of the street. Its centerpiece is the T.A. Wilson Great Gallery, a hall of steel and glass with more than 20 aircraft hanging freely from the ceiling, including a Douglas DC-3. In the middle stands the Lockheed M-21, there since 1994 – according to Wikipedia the only surviving aircraft of this variant of the A-12, with the D-21 reconnaissance drone mounted on its back. If you like the Blackbird family, the museum also has parts of an SR-71.

Right next to it stands the Red Barn. In this plain wooden building, Boeing once began building aircraft; today it tells the early history of aviation in the northwestern US and the beginnings of the manufacturer. How the small workshop on the Duwamish River became one of the world’s two big aircraft builders is covered on the page about Boeing.

The Personal Courage Wing opened on June 6, 2004 and shows more than 25 aircraft from World War I and World War II across roughly 8,000 square meters. The Charles Simonyi Space Gallery was added in November 2012. Because Seattle was left empty-handed when the retired Space Shuttles were distributed, the Full Fuselage Trainer stands there, a full-size fuselage trainer on which NASA astronauts were trained.

Photography at the Museum of Flight

In the halls, you mostly shoot handheld. The Great Gallery is relatively bright during the day thanks to its glass facade, but you only get the hanging aircraft completely in frame with a short focal length. In the Aviation Pavilion, it is the other way around: the roof protects against rain, the light comes in from the side and the aircraft stand close together. Check the museum’s current photo rules on site, especially for tripods.

Spotting at Boeing Field

The museum sits at the southwest corner of Boeing Field, officially King County International Airport (IATA BFI, ICAO KBFI). The airport is owned by King County and lies about eight kilometers south of downtown. The main runway 14R/32L is a good 3,000 meters long, and there is also a short parallel runway, 14L/32R, of around 1,130 meters.

The field is exciting for spotters because it is not a classic passenger airport. According to Wikipedia, UPS Airlines uses Boeing Field as a hub, joined by other freighters, plenty of general aviation and business aircraft. Kenmore Air offers scheduled flights. And Boeing itself prepares new 737s here for delivery after their first flight – so with a little luck you will see brand-new aircraft in customer livery, some still with test registrations.

According to Wikipedia, you can watch the traffic on the airfield from the museum. The spot guide Museum of Flight at Boeing Field describes where to stand for that and how the light moves through the day. The article Plane spotting in the US sums up the basics of spotting in the United States.

Planning your visit: tickets, hours, getting there

The address is 9404 East Marginal Way South. According to the museum, it is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed on Thanksgiving and December 25.

• Admission: according to the museum (as of October 2026) $29 for adults, $25 for seniors 65 and over and $21 for youth ages 5 to 17. Children ages four and under and members get in free.
• Free evening: On the first Thursday of every month, admission is free from 5 to 9 p.m.
• Parking: free according to the museum.
• Two sides: The main building and the Aviation Pavilion are on opposite sides of East Marginal Way. Allow for the walk in between.
• With kids: The big walk-through aircraft and the Space Shuttle trainer go over well with children. More ideas are in the article Plane spotting with kids.

Prices and opening hours can change. Check them on the museum’s website before your visit.

Combining it: Everett, Seattle and the Northwest

Seattle is Boeing country, and the Museum of Flight is only one building block. About an hour’s drive north, at Paine Field in Everett, is the factory where RA001 was built. There, the Future of Flight visitor center shows today’s production – details on the location are on the spot page Future of Flight in Everett. The Museum of Flight also runs its restoration workshop in Everett, where, according to Wikipedia, work is under way on a de Havilland Comet 4, among other projects.

You will probably land at Seattle-Tacoma Airport yourself. Alaska Airlines shapes the scene there; it is headquartered in the Seattle area and belongs to the Alaska Air Group. If you keep going south, the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in Oregon is another major institution. How to build a sensible tour like this is explained in the article on the plane spotting trip to the US.

Seattle compared with other US museums

The big aviation museums in the US each have their own profile. The National Air and Space Museum in Washington shows the icons of the pioneer era with the Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis, and its second site, the Udvar-Hazy Center, shows the big machines like Space Shuttle Discovery. The National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton concentrates on military aviation, the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson on sheer mass under the desert sun.

Seattle is the museum of commercial aviation and above all of Boeing prototypes. Nowhere else do the first jumbo, the first 727, the first 737 and an early Dreamliner stand so close together.

Conclusion

For airliner fans, the Museum of Flight is a must-visit. RA001 is more than an old jumbo: it is the aircraft that began the age of widebodies, and afterward it spent another quarter century testing new technology for other Boeing types. Around it stand a Concorde, the first jet-powered Air Force One and the prototypes of the 727, 737 and 787.

Plan a whole day, ask which aircraft you can currently walk through and take time for the view across to Boeing Field. If you then drive on to Everett, you see the path from the jumbo prototype to today’s production in two days.