WASHINGTON - Pat Nagel built model airplanes and had all the aviation books she could handle as a little girl in the 1930s. She pursued her passion as a flight attendant and as a docent for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Now 80, she has been a valuable source of expertise for museum curators preparing the new exhibit “America by Air,” which opens Saturday. Nagel, an American Airlines attendant from 1950 to 1952, was able to explain the purpose of a mysterious compartment on the DC-7 aircraft: It was used for dog crates.

“We were stewardesses. We were not flight attendants,” said Nagel, who will gives tours each week. “People said it was like being a movie star, but get this, movie stars had their pictures taken with us!”

It will be hard to miss one of the newest additions to the museum. The front section of a huge Boeing 747 airliner from Northwest Airlines pokes its nose into the new gallery, which curators spent more than five years developing. The exhibit traces the history of passenger air travel from its very beginning: the early attempts to start up airlines just a decade after the Wright brothers made the first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903.

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