US Airways Flight 1549 from New York took over three years to arrive at its destination at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, and when it did, it arrived in pieces on a fleet of flatbed trucks. The plane, famed for its ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ water landing is the main exhibit at the Sullenberger Aviation Museum at the airport. In 2022, the museum was renamed for the pilot who landed the plane after both engines were knocked out by bird strikes.
In a dramatically lit museum building surrounded by a plethora of other planes, mostly Cold War-era military planes, it occupies center space, literally and figuratively. The exhibits and artifacts from its career, crew and dramatic crash turn what might otherwise, frankly, be a ho-hum warehouse of warplanes into a compelling story about the people, as much as the planes, that make aviation.
Flight 1549, an Airbus A320, was fished out of the Hudson River after the crash which all 155 aboard survived, and painstakingly reassembled to be studied by investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board. When they were done, the plane belonged to US Airways’ insurance company, AIG, which donated the plane to the museum. The museum makes the point that it’s re-assembled, not restored.
But while the display of the plane is dramatic, to me the most interesting part is the stories of the people involved. That includes not just the crew and passengers, but the air traffic controllers and others involved, including first responders and ferryboat crews involved in the rescue.
There are timelines of the events—the communication between the pilots and air traffic control, the developing reporting in the media, which of course was quite different in 2009.
A lot of media attention at the time and since focused on the crew, especially Captain Chesley Sullenberger, a man already well-known in the industry as a safety advocate and trainer. The museum also brings a focus on the rest of the crew and their training which enabled them to get passengers off the plane and to safety. The exhibit also includes the villain of the piece—a stuffed and mounted Canada goose.
Flight 1549’s engines are used as examples for exhibits on how jet engines operate.
The museum was founded in 1992 on the edge of the Charlotte airport, in a historic hangar built by the Works Progress Administration in 1935 when the airport opened. It moved into a new built-to-order building in 2010, just across from the old hangar. The hangar is now being renovated to allow the museum to expand; it will feature exhibits on Charlotte’s history as “Aviation City.” In the meantime, the space between the two buildings shows off a variety of historic planes.
Next to that space, up against the fence, a guide to the various planes that can be seen passing by on the airport’s runways and taxiways.
Back inside, there are historic exhibits focusing on the roles that people in different areas, trades and more have played roles in the development of the aviation industry.
There are some interactive exhibits that allow visitors to ‘pilot’ planes in different scenarios, and a full-scale pilot trainer, in this case one built for the Boeing 727.
And, of course, everywhere you look up, there are familiar planes, and some less familiar. All in all, I’d have to say the Sullenberger Museum is unique among the aviation museums I’ve visited—and well worth a visit.
That’s one I would like to see. Truly inspirational.