HAL Heritage Centre and Aerospace Museum

Nestled in HAL premises alongside busy old airport road, HAL Heritage Centre and Aerospace Museum is India’s first aerospace museum. HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) is Asia’s largest aeronautical company. The idea behind setting up this museum was to educate people on the history of Indian aviation and also showcasing the remarkable achievements of HAL.

Let me take you along this journey of aerospace science.

 

Ever since my dad had heard about this museum, he was asking me to take him there since during his working days he had visited HAL couple of times to understand their design and then supply parts that are required to engines or propellers. So he was more excited than me to visit this.  I had planned this on a Saturday for a half day visit. We took metro till Swami Vivekananda Road Metro Station from here we took an auto to museum who charged us Rs 120.

 

As we got down from auto, this huge exhibit which marks 75 years of HAL caught our attention.

After clicking pictures here, we then walked towards the museum. There are interesting art work on the exterior walls of this museum. 

We then walked towards the ticket counter.

 

Ticket Fare : Rs 50 per adult plus Rs 20 per smartphone.

Timings : 9:30 am to 4:30 pm

 

We took our tickets and entered the museum. This museum is managed and fully maintained by HAL only. This museum is very well planned with information signboards to guide people to plan their visit accordingly. 

But the huge MIG21’s parked on the left side of the museum invariably catches everyone’s attention and every person who enters the museum will start walking towards these aircrafts on display.

Herbal Garden

Here you will find plants of immense medicinal value grown. There is a board with the numbering of each plant on the outside. Once you enter the garden, you will find numbers marked on each plant for users to understand.

Sustainability Development Park

This park aims at educating the visitors on alternate energy sources with working models of solar panels, hybrid windmills, biogas plants and solar water heating.  

Then we walked ahead and saw some more aircrafts on display. My dad was very happy seeing all these. He was explaining me what each of the aircrafts and helicopters here are meant for. In few sections, I didn’t even had to read the display board. He was my Wikipedia here .

After observing all the aircrafts on display on the left side of the museum area, we walked back towards the center. Here you will find air traffic control radar and antenna. This is so huge that it cannot be missed.

We then started checking out other aircrafts on the right side of the museum area. Aircrafts like Dove, Hansa, Kiran are on display here.

Next important display that will catch your attention here is the huge PSLV heat shield. Vow this reminded me of the hindi movie “Mission Mangal”. This gives us a glimpse of the remarkable achievement made by the country in space technology. 

Souvenir Shop

We entered Souvenir shop. Here you will get interesting stuffs to take back home as remembrance of what you have experienced here. I found tiny aircraft models and key chains good to be taken as souvenirs from here.

Cafeteria

We couldn’t spot any restaurants around this museum while we were drove to this place. So thanks to HAL for planning a cafeteria inside the museum. You will get cold drinks, hot drinks(tea, coffee, hot chocolate), some snacks. But this is good enough for survival since this museum easily takes around 2-3 hours if you are interested in work that goes in aviation industry.

Aircraft and Engine Indoor Display

We next entered Hall 1 where in you will find aircraft and engine indoor display. 

Here we saw different types of engines that support an aircraft. And on the walls you will find interesting facts on aviation industry.

Restrooms are available on either sides of this hall. They are clean and well maintained. 

 

Our next stop was the HAL gallery. Before entering this gallery, on the left side we saw a huge bust of Sri Seth Walchad Hirachand who is the founder of HAL.

 HAL Gallery

We next entered HAL gallery where you will get to see the journey of HAL and evolution of aviation industry. There are around 6 rooms and one hall of fame. Each room has a timeline of their journey starting from 1940 to 2000. This itself will easily take an hour to see the entire gallery.

While we were in the 2^nd room, one of the volunteers informed us that there is an audio-visual movie that is going to start in 5 mins. So we rushed to that room. Show duration was around 10-15 minutes and they played journey of HAL.  

After this we continued exploring the rest of the halls and the timeline of aviation industry. It took almost an hour for us to cover this HAL gallery. 

Simulators – Experience flying first hand

We next moved to the main building of the museum to experience Simulators.

There are two types of Simulators here where you can experience the flying of these fighter jet planes. First Simulator is the Basic Simulator which is for kids. It was really nice to see kids explaining their experience to their friends and family. Second one is Motion Simulator which is for adults. This was under maintenance hence we couldn’t get this experience. 

Nevertheless there was so much to read here as each portion of the wall had information displays on space science, PSLV and GSVL satellites, launch at Sriharikota and many more. HAL supplies ISRO with propellant tanks, feed lines, launch vehicles and structures of various satellites.  

This museum is a one of its kind for aviation enthusiasts. Would recommend taking your kids and parents with you since this museum grabs its attention from all generations in equal measures which was clearly evident here today. We thanked HAL for offering us with this wholesome aerospace experience in the form of this museum.