YORKSHIRE Air Museum & Allied Air Forces Memorial is not only continuing to fly high, its reputation is soaring.

Voted Tourist Attraction of the Year in a national poll by the tourist Magazine, Going Places, in February and as the centrepiece of an amazing programme of entente cordiale planned with the French in October, it should come as no surprise that the museum is attempting to repeat its victory of 2008 in this year’s Tourism And Hospitality Business Of The Year category.

With clear and effective management, the 149-employee organisation is bucking the trend of non-funded registered museums across the country by creating a solid surplus and investing in new exhibitions and exhibits on its 20 acres in Elvington.

Include in that its recent acquisition of a live Nimrod MR2 (original cost £400 million) from the Ministry of Defence for a hotly-negotiated sale price which confirmed the museum’s status as the largest History of Aviation centre in the UK and the only allied Air Forces Memorial in Europe.

The result: Visitor numbers have increased by an average 12 per cent year on year since 1999.

Now the museum is gearing up for the French in York week in October, which apart from numerous exhibitions at Elvington will include a commemorative service at York Minster on October 17 to mark the 66th anniversary since the two French squadrons based there during the Second World War returned home to become the air force of the liberated French Republic.

The event, which is the brainchild of museum director, Ian Reed, the museum’s director, is likely to attract 5,000 people to York, many of them from France including top French politicians, diplomats, military chiefs and war veterans, generating about £200,000 for the York economy and forging bonds between French businesses and ventures in York.

They are likely to discover some of the newer delights of the museum, including its digital Astra Theatre which opened with the help of Saville Audio Video of York; and the former base’s award winning gardens.

Next year the museum plans to open a new five-acre environmental park, an outdoor educational centre, built with the help of The Environment Agency and the British Butterfly and Moth Association and adding to the delight of thousands of children who annually make educational visits to the site.