What's on at Air Force Museum of New Zealand
Latest from the museum
Birthday Parties
Mission: Best birthday ever
Zip up a flight suit, grab your dog tags, and dive into a fully hosted birthday “mission”. From air & sea adventures for preschoolers to rescue and cadet challenges for older children. Our Programmes team runs the activities, the children get awesome photo moments (and party bags), and you can add catering through our café.
Book a birthday party
Latest Exhibition
Victory!
It is 80 years since the end of the Second World War.
Our Victory exhibition, upstairs in the atrium, marks this significant milestone in world history, and the story of the RNZAF.
Victory includes images and memories of Victory in Europe (VE) Day and Victory over Japan (VJ) Day which have been sourced from photographs, letters, postcards and personal histories in our collection.
Victory includes insights into how Kiwis celebrated, and how they felt.
Many found it difficult to rejoice after so much loss and suffering.
You’re welcome to come along and learn all about the end of World War Two with us.
Exhibition
The Mighty Hercules
The Mighty Hercules exhibition is on in the Cochrane Gallery upstairs in our atrium. Come and visit and learn all about this extraordinary aircraft.
Learn More
Update
Overseas visitor charge
A $15 entry charge was introduced for all international visitors to the Air Force Museum of New Zealand from 31 March 2025. Tickets available online or from our Welcome Desk on arrival.
The charge is required to cover rising costs and to contribute to our new $20 million extension to house the newest members of our collection – our historic Hercules and Orion aircraft.
Learn More
Our Aircraft
Explore AircraftMore to explore
PERFECT FORECAST FOR A MUSEUM VISIT TOMORROW! It will be warm and dry inside, and we've got plenty of fun things for the kids to beat the holiday blues.
FREE entry (for Kiwis), FREE Balloon Busters and Drop Zone games, exhibitions galore and loads of beautiful aircraft to admire.
Massive carpark, hassle-free visiting and educational too!
See you from 9.30am at 45 Harvard Avenue, Wigram.
Open every day over the holidays.
Just look for the Harvard on the pol#freethingstodoinchristchurchh#schoolholidayfunayfun ... See MoreSee Less
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JUST ONE MORE! There's always room to squeeze in one more bit of Warbirds goodness, especially if it is a show reel. Huge thanks to our teamWarbirds Over Wanakaanaka @warbirdsoverwanaka for a great show. ... See MoreSee Less
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It was awesome to catch up with Chris,Barf and the team with an awesome display tent,seemed to be very well patronised from what I saw! Well done all,great to see the Air Force Museum keeping a high profile!😉😊
Awesome job team
CLEAN MY BLERIOT! A clean Blériot is a happy French warp-winged monoplane, as we always say.
We took the opportunity (or more to the point super Jim Ritchie did) while our Blériot was down from the skies to give it a spruce up.
Britannia has been vaccummed, cleaned, checked and resuspended for the next 12 months or so, when it'll be replaced with a new surprise aircraft.
The aircraft is a replica, built in Duendin in 1985, of a Blériot XI-2 patriotically named Britannia.
On the afternoon of 17 January 1914, pilot Joe Hammond took off in Auckland on a test flight in New Zealand’s first military aircraft.
Joe, the New Zealand’s Government’s official pilot, circled the Epsom Showgrounds in Britannia seven or eight times before landing.
The following day he took off again and flew around Auckland and the Waitemata Harbour for an hour.
The Blériot had been presented to New Zealand by the Imperial Air Fleet Committee.
The committee was made up of a group of British businessmen with a vision to sow the seeds for military aviation in each of the King's self-governing possessions.'
Hence the name - Britannia!
Technical issues meant Britannia only flew briefly in New Zealand before being packed up and shipped back to the United Kingdom in October 1914 following the outbreak of World War One.
Blériot aircraft were technical marvels which were way ahead of their time. A Blériot was the first aircraft to fly across La Manche (which is what Louis Blériot called the English Channel).
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