News: Dutch Aviodrome Closes Its Doors

[FlyTexas]

Very sad.
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/s ... er-24-2011

Brian

[Garry Russell]

Indeed

Back in the Summer they were saying it couldn't last

It is a wonderful museum with a wide variety of well kept exhibits that the Dutch can be justly proud of

This is something worthy of a Euro grant surely.

Since the news first broke it's seem to be the usual thing of everyone standing around expecting someone else to do something (like the Cosford airliners)

Hopefully, now it's come to this, someone will come up with money before the skill base is lost.

[TobyV]

That is sad indeed and quite a surprise. I had wanted to visit that at some point and maybe take a flight in the Fokker 27. It looked such a well presented collection (compared to some others). Sadly, where something is not state funded but is well presented perhaps it means they've spent more than they could afford?

Great shame, hope someone either steps in and rescues it or the collecction is at least dispersed to careful new owners.

[Archer]

It's a long story how we came to this point but some of the facts are:
- In 2010 the museum was restructured and merged with the Dutch Dakota Association under one name although on the business side the two companies stayed seperate. A new director was appointed, part of his task was getting the financial situation in order. In my view this was a bit of a shotgun marriage, ordered by the two main financial backers: Schiphol and KLM.
- One of the attractions of the 'new' location was that there was room for conferences and such and the financial plans included expected gains from such events. Basically the paying public who came there for the aeroplanes were not enough to keep the museum afloat, and with the financial crisis (and aided by the museum's location and sometimes difficult accessibility) not enough events came their way.
- On 8th November the museum asked for a suspension of payment. Some of the rumours were that Schiphol and KLM balked at providing more funds to keep the museum open.
- On 24th November the museum filed for bankruptcy, initially the museum stayed open but it closed its doors on 24th December after talks with the Dutch firm Libema ended. This may be a good thing as Libema is not known for its museums, they own two ex-car museums in which all the cars have now gone, leaving 'event locations' that carry the name of the museum only.
- Some of the aircraft and items at the Aviodrome are not owned by them, so for example the two DDA Dakotas are not affected by this (although one of them was stored at the museum, it may lose its hangar). Also KLM has apparently bought out the DC-2 and intents to operate that on its own. In a similar way other projects have already moved to new owners, although in some cases it is merely a formality as for example the DC-2 was already largely KLM financed.
- What surprises me the most is that in the past weeks the media have only shown the merest of interest in this story. There has been no sound at all from politicians about this situation, apparently the only large-scale Dutch historical civil aviation collection is of no interest to this country!

Somehow I cannot believe that this collection will be allowed to be broken up, but it looks grim at this point.

[DaveB]

Grim indeed Jelle Thanks for the background info.. fingers crossed they get a lifeline

ATB
DaveB

[Paul K]

Very bad news indeed. I hope a rescue is put together; we don't want to be losing aviation museums or their exhibits.