Gatwick Aviation Museum: what is there, and how to reach it

The museum opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00, and closes Monday to Thursday. Last entry is an hour before closing, so arriving after 16:00 is not worth the fare. Extra weekday openings are added during school holidays, and weekday or evening visits can be arranged by appointment for groups and schools. That three-day week is the first thing to check against your dates, because a midweek layover cannot include this trip at all.

Museum ticket page, July 2026. Prices are set by the charity and can change; the Shackleton tour and the simulator are charged separately.

The family ticket saves £3 against four separate tickets, which is modest. Annual membership is the better sum for anyone local: £40 for one adult, £75 for two, £80 for a single parent and two children, and £115 for a family of four, each valid 12 months and covering unlimited entry, a free hot drink per visit and 10% off in the shop and the coffee shop. At £12.50 a visit, a single membership pays for itself on the fourth trip.

The collection covers aircraft and engines from what the museum calls the golden age of British aircraft manufacturing, roughly the end of the Second World War to the 1970s, alongside hundreds of model aircraft and instrument panels. The centrepiece is an Avro Shackleton Mk 3. Tours of it run for about 45 minutes at £5 per person, booked on arrival rather than in advance, and are led by crew who served on the type, which is the part no larger museum can reproduce. They depend on the weather and on volunteers being available, and under-fives cannot go aboard.

Elsewhere you can climb inside a full-size Robinson R22 helicopter, sit in the cockpit of an Islander with a uniform on for photographs, and enter the nose section of a Canberra. A separate exhibition traces Gatwick's own history and the airlines that flew from it, with uniforms, models and memorabilia; the northern runway page picks that story up at the modern end. There is also a motion simulator running a Typhoon training mission, charged as an extra.

The other draw is the viewing area, which sits close to the runway and is a genuine spotting position rather than a token gesture. Reaching it means walking across the event field, so the museum asks for sturdy footwear, and in wet weather that advice is worth following.

The museum is at Lowfield Heath Road, Charlwood, RH6 0BT, in Surrey just over the boundary from the airport. Without a car, the route is the Metrobus 22 from the South Terminal towards Charlwood. The nearest stop is Charlwood, about six minutes' walk from the entrance, with Ifield Road about ten. The Gatwick bus page covers fares and where the stops sit at the airport.

Do not walk it. The site is about a mile from the airfield in a straight line and the temptation is obvious, but the museum states plainly that the approach is a rural road without pavements and advises against it. Arriving by train means coming to Gatwick Airport station at the South Terminal first and picking up the 22 there.

Driving is straightforward from the M25 and the A23, and the museum gives about an hour and ten minutes from London, 40 minutes from Brighton and under ten minutes from Crawley. One warning from the museum's own directions: there are no brown tourist signs for it, so set the postcode and follow that rather than watching for signage that does not exist.

Parking in the main car park is free to every museum visitor, which is unusual this close to an airport where an hour in a short stay car park costs real money. Disabled parking is available. Overflow parking on the event field can carry a charge, so ask at the gate if you are directed onto grass.

Access is honestly described by the museum rather than oversold. Wheelchair and pushchair access covers much of the site, there is a wheelchair-friendly toilet with the others inside the main entrance, but some exhibits cannot be reached in a wheelchair and parts of the grassland are unsuitable. If specific aircraft matter to you, the museum takes calls on 01293 862 294 on the days it opens.

The Galley Coffee Shop does hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, snacks and cakes, and there is a gift shop whose takings go to the charity. Picnicking is welcomed in the grounds, there is a nature trail, and deer are common in the fields, so the site works as an afternoon outdoors as much as a museum visit.

For a Friday-to-Sunday layover of five hours or more, this is the most interesting thing within a short bus ride of the terminals, and the free car park and £5 child ticket make it cheap for a family. Allow around three hours to do it properly, plus 40 minutes each way for the bus and the walk, and drop bags at the left luggage desk before you go rather than dragging a case across a field.

It does not fit a midweek stopover, a tight connection, or a wet day with small children, and the museum would rather tell you that than take your fare. If the timing does not work, the train into London covers the alternative for a long layover, and the lounges cover staying put in comfort.