After several months of work, the PW-2D Gapa glider successfully completed its maiden flight. The Museum now has another flying exhibit – one of only two gliders of this type currently in flight.
The PW-2D Gapa SP-3515 (serial number U-04, manufactured in 1991) was first flown by January Roman on 16 February 1991. It was donated to the Museum in 2006 by the Podkarpackie Aeroclub as technically sound but unfit for flight. The glider had previously been used by the Bractwo Podwójnej Mewy Aviation Association.
After almost two decades in storage, extensive restoration and maintenance work began in 2025 with the aim of restoring the glider to airworthiness.
Following completion of these works, the glider was issued with a new registration mark, SP-GMLP, and certified as airworthy in the K6E Experimental and UL-G Ultralight Glider categories.
The successful test flight marks the symbolic culmination of the immense work carried out by the Museum’s specialists and everyone involved in the project to restore the glider to airworthy condition.
The PW-2D Gapa is a Polish training glider developed in the 1980s at the Warsaw University of Technology by a design team led by Dr Roman Switkiewicz. The design was conceived as a modern, lightweight and economical glider intended for basic training. Thanks to its distinctive silhouette and excellent handling characteristics, the Gapa became one of the most recognisable Polish glider designs of the late 20th century.
The historic maiden flight of the glider was carried out by test pilot January Roman on 25 July 1985 in Warsaw, in the U-02 prototype. The second prototype took to the air on 18 December 1985. A total of 85 flights were completed during the test phase, amounting to 25 hours of flight time. Just one year later, the glider was granted an Aircraft Type Certificate, paving the way for the start of series production.
In August 1986, the Gapa was used during training for students of the Warsaw University of Technology at the ‘Żar’ gliding school, completing around 500 training flights, including instructor flights. The design also quickly gained recognition within the aviation community — in 1987, during an exhibition of Polish aircraft designs built outside the industry, organised at the Warsaw University of Technology, the glider won first place.
Mass production was undertaken by the Experimental Workshops for Composite Aircraft Structures and the Warsaw University of Technology. In the years that followed, the design was further developed and modernised.
In total, only 19 PW-2D Gapa gliders were produced, making this model exceptionally rare today. Polish gliders also found their way abroad — including 6 to the United States, 3 to Japan, 1 to Mexico and 2 to Colombia.
From now on, the museum’s Gapa will take part in air shows and outdoor aviation events as a living testament to the history of Polish gliding. The public will have the opportunity to see not only the aircraft itself, but also its flight capabilities — exactly as they were all those years ago.
The restoration of the PW-2D Gapa glider to airworthy condition is yet another example of the Polish Aviation Museum’s efforts to actively preserve aviation heritage — not only by safeguarding historic aircraft, but also by bringing them back to life in the air.
View the gallery from the maiden flight of the PW-2 Gapa glider:
Interestingly, visitors to the Polish Aviation Museum can also see another example of the PW-2D Gapa glider. One of the gliders, painstakingly restored as a static display, is on show in the exhibition “Downwind and Upwind – Civil Aviation”, which opened in the Museum’s new hangar at the end of August 2025.
