The Museum of Flight General Aircraft Files is an artificial collection created by the Museum's Archives staff with roughly 10,000 images of assorted aircraft and aviation-related subjects, covering the span of aviation history. The files are organized in two series: Aircraft Files and Subject Files.

Series I, Aircraft Files, makes up the bulk of the collection with approximately 2,500 files with likely close to 10,000 images of various aircraft models and variants. Aircraft designed and manufactured by the Boeing Company are very heavily represented as well as military aircraft from other American manufacturers. Commercial aircraft are less well represented in the collection as photographs of planes in airline livery are transferred to the Archive's Commercial Airlines Collection. Images in this series predominately depict aircraft in flight or parked on the ground, but some files also include images of aircraft in production at factories or interior views of cockpits and cabins.

Series II, Subject Files, is a smaller component of the collection by far with roughly 1,000 images. Included here are photographs of various aviation and aerospace subjects that are not images of airplanes. Subjects include aircraft carriers, airfields and military sites, ballooning, Boeing Company buildings, events such as the Berlin Air Lift and various air races, and rockets and other imagery related to space exploration.

The photographs across this collection are predominantly black-and-white but some color prints are present. Most prints are 8x10 inches but smaller and larger prints are also present. They are a mix of professionally-shot images and personal snapshots. Most images are photographic prints but some photomechanical prints and digital prints are also present as well as a few negatives, transparencies and slides. This collection generally does not include images centered around people which can be found in the Museum's Biographical Information Files.