Texas Air and Space Museum Plans Major Expansion

With hopes to relocate and expand, the Texas Air and Space Museum of Amarillo, Texas has acquired about 20 acres that would significantly increase the museum’s ability to display and store aircraft. The property, anonymously donated to the nonprofit, features eight warehouses that potentially could hold about 250 aircraft, according to museum board president Ron Fernuik.

The museum currently operates within one-and-a-half acres of donated space from TAC Air and English Fields Aviation, The Texas Air and Space Museum owns six aircraft, four of which are on display, including a Grumman NASA Shuttle Training Aircraft flown by Rick Husband, Fernuik said. “Most aircraft museums in the nation are short of hangars, and they have to park planes outdoors,” Warner said. “Very few, if any, have enough hangars and this one is flush with huge buildings for airplane storage.”

The Amarillo College aviation program uses some of the museum’s aircraft for its classes, and more than 1,750 people visited the Texas Air and Space Museum during 2012, Fernuik said. “We don’t know that we won’t have the next Amelia Earhart or Rick Husband,” he said. “Unfortunately, the youth don’t know where their rights came from. We’re not a military museum, but we don’t want those stories of the war effort and peacetime to be lost.”