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Photo Max Pfandl (CC BY 2.0)

During the afternoon of Saturday the 15th of September, the crew of an L-39 of the Breitling Jet Team ejected from its aircraft after developing mechanical trouble. The team was overflying the Netherlands on its way to a meeting in Belgium.

The two-man crew, composed of the pilot and a mechanic in the rear seat, escaped unharmed while the aircraft crashed in a field.

Source: Blog de Piloter Mag

Updated: the accident took place on Saturday, not Sunday.

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Photo Mw007 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sad news: due to the poor economic conditions, the Nationaal Luchtvaart-Themapark Aviodrome aviation theme park, better known as the Aviodrome, has filed for bankruptcy according to this Dutch news website. The future of the park and its extensive collection is unknown at this time, although it would seem some investors have lately shown interest.

The Nationaal Luchtvaart-Themapark Aviodrome is a large aerospace museum in The Netherlands that has been located on Lelystad Airport since 2003.

The first installment of this aviation museum opened its doors in 1960 on Schiphol airport under the name Aeroplanorama and had only seven aircraft on display. It closed its doors in 1967 and a new museum called Aviodome was opened in 1971 on Schiphol. The main building was a large aluminium geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, the largest in the world at the time, which housed most of the aircraft on display. Hence the ‘dome’ in the name Aviodome.

Over time, the location became too small for the growing aircraft collection and in 2003 the museum was moved to a new location on Lelystad Airport. The building at Schiphol was demolished and the name was changed to Aviodrome. On the current location, it has three buildings: the main building where most of the aircraft on display are located and where there’s a restaurant and a cinema, a replica of the old Schiphol terminal building from 1928 and a hangar for aircraft storage with limited access for visitors. Added to the aviation theme were several artifacts from several Dutch space programs, such as the backup flight-article of ANS (Astronomical Netherlands Satellite), a mockup of IRAS and the high-speed windtunnel model of the Huygens probe. In doing so the aviation museum became an aerospace museum..