Mid-year 2025 Update

Alex Nelon

Apr 23, 2026 • 2 min read

We used to joke about the periodic flooding at the airfields here in Hendersonville - after September 28, 2024, we don’t joke so much. “Lake Johnson” became an unprecedented flood.

Where to begin??

First of all, you take time to figure out just what has to be done to recover from having all the airplanes on the field wiped out. You sit down and try to decide - and this takes time - just what your first steps will be and you go from there.

The Western North Carolina Air Museum is the meeting venue for EAA Chapter 1016 and many of our members build, maintain and fly their airplanes from the two small runways that lie side by side. One side is paved and bears the ID of 0A7; it’s owned by Aerolina, Inc., and has its own hangars. The other runway is grass, about 2,700 feet long and was purchased from the Johnson family by the Air Museum in late 2023. The identifier is 8NC9. The Museum relies on hangar rents to service the mortgage for the airfield; there’s not much left over to buy fuel for the tractor that the EAA Chapter donated and do the fixups.that inevitably are needed. The Museum relies on volunteers, many of whom are EAA members, to hold the line on costs.

So much for the background.

When Hurricane Helene ripped across Western North Carolina it left a path of destruction that hadn’t been seen before in this part of the state.

Airplanes lay crushed under fallen hangar doors or filled with water and fine silt that seemed to get into everything. Engines were particularly vulnerable and had to be drained and filled with oil if there was to be any hope at all of salvaging them. Very few survived to run again without a major teardown.

Most hangar occupants went to work right away to set about dealing with insurance or salvage companies and started the long, dirty task of recovery. Within a few months, most hangars were ready for airplanes again and a few replacements began to arrive. As of this writing in June of 2025 all the hangars on the Museum airfield are occupied once again and the story of how this happened is inspirational.

Please do stop by if you’re in the area and enjoy our little corner of the world.

The Museum is open Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sunday from Noon to 5 and is staffed by volunteer docents who are there to show you around without hovering. There are interactive displays and mockup cockpits that are especially appealing to youngsters (of all ages).

Whether you fly in or drive in, you’ll be welcome - you never know; there might even be a burger or brat on a grill in front of one of our hangars. It’s a very spontaneous place.

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