SEATTLE – The opening of the Future of Flight in Everett gives Puget Sound three separate aircraft museums, and that’s OK, says Bonnie Dunbar, the newly appointed president of Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
Dunbar, the former Space Shuttle astronaut, will be the keynote speaker at the Snohomish County Economic Development Council’s annual dinner, which will be 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday in the ballroom of the Everett Events Center.
| Snohomish County’s new Future of Flight Museum opens Dec. 16.
The facility, which will feature hands-on exhibits, including one that allows you to design your own jet, will be the subject of a special section that will appear in The Herald on opening day. |
She is expected to speak on ways the Museum of Flight can collaborate with the region’s other aerospace museums.
In a recent interview, Dunbar said Everett’s Future of Flight, Seattle’s Museum of Flight and the Heritage Flying Collection in Arlington all have a common goal – telling the story of flight.
But each has its own niche, she noted: the Heritage collection keeps historical planes in flying condition; the Museum of Flight is home to a range of aviation and space-related artifacts; and the Future of Flight will explore what’s next for the aviation industry.
“We think we have a very complementary mission,” she said.
Dunbar joined the museum in October. She’s a native of Outlook, Wash., and a graduate of the University of Washington, where she earned bachelor and master degrees in engineering. She also holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Houston.
Dunbar worked for Boeing and Rockwell International before joining NASA as a payload officer and flight controller in 1978. She became an astronaut in 1981 and made five space shuttle flights, logging more than 50 days in space.
At the Museum of Flight, she leads the granddaddy of Northwest air and space museums. It has its roots in a group that formed in 1965 to restore a 1929 Boeing 80A-1 airliner, and opened under its current name in 1968 with the first public displays at Seattle Center.
Since then, the museum has acquired and restored the “Red Barn” – the old boat shed that became the Boeing Co.’s first factory – and a range of historic aircraft including the original Air Force One presidential jet, the only Concorde supersonic airliner on display on the West Coast, and “The City of Everett,” the first 747 to fly.
In 2004, the museum opened its new “Personal Courage” wing, which includes exhibits of 28 warplanes from World War I and World War II.
Close to a half million people visit the Museum of Flight annually, Dunbar said, with 80 percent of those visitors coming from outside the region.
Far from competing, the museums already are all working together, Dunbar said. The Museum of Flight has loaned artifacts from its collection to the Future of Flight and other West Coast museums. “We support each other,” she said.
The museum also has a restoration center at Paine Field, and it is looking for ways to collaborate with the Future of Flight, Dunbar said. It’s also in talks with the Heritage Collection, with the idea that someday planes from the Arlington collection will fly to Boeing Field for demonstration at the museum.
“I’m very optimistic,” she said.
Powered flight is one of mankind’s great achievements and a key factor in the history of the past 100 years.
“It’s the dream of mankind since … Icarus,” Dunbar said. “It’s really helped propel us forward.”
The three Puget Sound air museums are key places for teaching about that, she said.
“What museums do,” Dunbar said, “is make sure we don’t lose connection with that heritage. Everyone has its niche in that.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
