Dusty Crophopper could be coming in for a landing at the National Air and Space Museum.

Dusty Crophopper is one step closer to being immortalized at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Disney Enterprises Inc. has given NAAA the green light to work with the Smithsonian Institution on displaying Disney’s Dusty Crophopper character likeness aircraft at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Pending approval from the National Air and Space Museum’s review committee, NAAA’s goal is to have the Dusty Crophopper aircraft on display starting on or near the 100th anniversary of the first application by a propelled aircraft on Aug. 3, 2021.

The owner of the airplane, aerial applicator Rusty Lindeman of Rusty’s Flying Service in Texas, is willing to donate his Dusty Crophopper-adorned Air Tractor to the museum, but would not be able to do so without the permission of Disney, the creator of the Dusty Crophopper character. Dusty Crophopper is the protagonist in the Disney films Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue, which aired in movie theaters in 2013 and 2014, respectively. For the past several months NAAA has worked as an intermediary and broker between Lindeman, the general aviation curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Disney Enterprises to add the Dusty Crophopper character likeness aircraft to the museum’s collection of ag aircraft on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

In advance of the release of Disney’s first Planes animated film in 2013, Air Tractor Inc. connected Disney with Lindeman after learning that the movie studio was looking for an Air Tractor to convert into Dusty Crophopper’s likeness to perform at air shows that summer. Lindeman had a spare plane available and agreed to convert his piston Air Tractor to the equivalent of a turbine-powered AT-400A and paint it to match Dusty’s paint scheme and features. It took Lindeman and a team of helpers six weeks to complete the aircraft makeover. They refurbished the fuselage, wings and tail. They put a complete turbine conversion engine on the front and had a propeller rebuilt. Then they painted it to look just like Dusty Crophopper using colors pre-selected by Disney.

Once the conversion was complete, Lindeman’s aircraft became the physical embodiment of the tenacious animated ag plane. The Texas-based aerial applicator spent the better part of two summers in 2013 and ’14 performing in air shows throughout North America as the live-action version of Dusty Crophopper. For the fifth and final stop of the live-action Dusty Crophopper’s 2013 summer tour, Lindeman performed at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

During the 2013 tour, Lindeman said, “Truthfully, the most exciting aspect of working on this project has been to see the expressions on kids’ faces when we show off the airplane. That’s what I have enjoyed the most.”

If the National Air and Space Museum accepts Lindeman’s Dusty Crophopper plane, expect to see a lot more smiles from children when they spot what is arguably America’s most identifiable ag plane and quite possibly its most beloved ag plane proudly on display at the museum.

The animated Dusty Crophopper first soared into theaters in 2013.