The World's Only Handley Page Hampden Lives in Langley — For Now
Inside Hangar 3 at Langley Airport is a hidden gem: a hands-on aviation museum with 25 historic aircraft, including the last of its kind WWII bomber, and a planned move soon.
Canadian Museum of Flight
✍️ By Debbie Balfour | Langley News | May 3, 2026
Most Langley residents have driven past the sign at 216 Street a hundred times without ever turning in. That's a small tragedy. Tucked inside Hangar 3 at Langley Regional Airport, right where commercial life ends, and the runway begins, is the Canadian Museum of Flight: one of the most under-visited cultural treasures in the Fraser Valley.
Twenty-five-plus aircraft fill 40,000 square feet of exhibit space, spanning WWI through modern jets. Six of them still fly. You can touch most of them. The kids can sit in some cockpits. It is, by almost any measure, one of the best family afternoons in Langley.
The collection that earns the trip
The marquee piece is the museum's Handley Page Hampden, the last of its type in existence anywhere in the world. Used for coastal patrol along the BC coast during the Second World War, the aircraft crashed offshore in 1942 and was later recovered and restored by the museum's volunteer team. There is no other like it.
Alongside the Hampden sits an Avro CF-104D Starfighter recently returned from restoration with a fresh paint scheme, a 1940 de Havilland Tiger Moth still in flying condition, a Douglas DC-3 with both military and civilian history, a working 1942 Harvard, and a full-size replica Sopwith Camel (British First World War single-seat biplane fighter aircraft) that was introduced on the Western Front in 1917that regularly appears at events across the Lower Mainland. The museum is also an active restoration centre, meaning what's on display changes as volunteers bring new aircraft back to life.
Why it's quietly extraordinary
The Canadian Museum of Flight is entirely volunteer-driven. Walk in on any weekday, and you'll likely find retired pilots, mechanics, and enthusiasts working on restorations in the main hangar. Visitors are welcome to watch, ask questions, and hear the stories, the kind of experience most museums simply don't offer anymore.
The gift shop funds the preservation work. Birthday parties are bookable. The entire hangar can be rented for special events and weddings. The museum describes itself as "one of only a few flying aviation museums in Canada," and that's not marketing language; it's a genuine distinction.
See it in Langley while you can
In 2024, the museum announced it had reached an agreement to move to a larger 110,000-square-foot site at Pitt Meadows Regional Airport, and the DC-3 was already relocated in January 2025. The full move is still being finalized, but the window to experience the museum in its longtime Langley home is closing.
Plan your visit
Hangar 3, 5333 216th Street, Langley. Open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Adults $14, seniors and youth $10, kids under six free, family rate $35 for up to two adults and five children (all taxes included). Free parking. Wheelchair accessible. If the weather's good, grab a coffee and a pastry at Blacksmith Bakery in the airport terminal next door and eat it at the patio overlooking the runway.
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