2025 has been a strong year for the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington, near York, with close to 70,000 visitors passing through its gates. One of the largest independent aviation museums in the UK, the museum marked its 40th anniversary in 2025, celebrating the milestone with a summer air display in August. Alongside that, a busy events calendar helped draw in crowds, ranging from the popular 1940s “We’ll Meet Again” weekend, which included a VE Day theme, to the Cold War Wheels car and motorcycle show, which attracted a record 1,200 attendees.
The Marketing and Communications Manager at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Jerry Ibbotson, said: “2025 was a great year, with around 70,000 people paying us a visit. That includes not just hardcore aircraft buffs but families, tourists, and people looking for an interesting and engaging day out. We also welcomed school groups, who enjoyed visits under the wing of our brilliant education team.”
Looking back on 2025, Ibbotson highlighted several major moments and ongoing projects: “Over the last year, we marked the 80th anniversary of VE Day, celebrated our own 40th birthday with a flying display, saw the iconic Victor aircraft repainted into camouflage colours for the first time since the 1980s, and much more. Work is ongoing to restore and reassemble the mighty Avro Shackleton, which arrived with us in pieces a year ago from Coventry airport. We’ve made major improvements to our second hangar, which will provide visitors with an insight into some of the restoration work carried out. Our reconstruction of a French Officer’s Mess has also had a major refresh and repaint.”
Looking ahead, 2026 will bring another important anniversary. The museum, located on the site of a former Second World War RAF bomber base, will mark 30 years since the completion of restoration work on its Handley Page Halifax MkIII, the center of attraction of the museum. The Halifax was a type flown from RAF Elvington and other Yorkshire bases during the war, and the museum’s aircraft took ten years to reconstruct, as no complete examples had survived. Plans for “Operation Halifax” include new displays exploring how the restoration was carried out, how Halifax bombers were produced in huge numbers during the war, and the story of the best-known Halifax of all, “Friday the 13th.” For more information and to support the Yorkshire Air Museum, visit this link: yorkshireairmuseum.org.
