Qualla: Sullenberger Aviation Museum

Sullenberger Aviation Museum: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan, CC BY-SA 3.0. On January 15, 2009, six minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia, US Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of Canada geese over the Bronx. Both engines lost power. Captain Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles had no time to reach an airport. Sullenberger glided the Airbus A320 onto the surface of the Hudson River. All 155 people aboard survived. The airplane that did that - tail number N106US, the actual Airbus, every dent and every scrape - now sits inside a museum hangar in Charlotte, North Carolina, displayed in as-recovered condition. Everything that was in the aircraft remains there, except the passengers' personal belongings. It is the youngest commercial airliner on display in any American museum, by about 35 years.

Image: RadioFan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sullenberger Aviation Museum: From Carolinas Aviation to Sullenberger

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N970ah, CC BY-SA 3.0. The museum was founded in 1992 on the grounds of Charlotte Douglas International Airport as the Carolinas Aviation Museum. It built a collection of more than 50 aircraft - military jets, helicopters, a Piedmont Airlines DC-3 in original livery, an aviation library with 9,000 volu...

Image: N970ah | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sullenberger Aviation Museum: Aviation City

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan, CC BY-SA 3.0. The reopened museum is organized into three galleries. Aviation City occupies the airport's original 1936 hangar - a Works Progress Administration structure that has been continuously in use since Eastern Air Lines started scheduled service at Charlotte Municipal Airport. The han...

Image: RadioFan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sullenberger Aviation Museum: The Rare and the Recovered

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Beyond the Hudson Airbus, the collection holds aircraft that exist nowhere else. One of only two surviving Douglas D-558 Skystreaks - the experimental jet that briefly held the world airspeed record in 1947. The second U.S.-built Harrier ever made, the AV-8B test airframe that lo...

Image: RadioFan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sullenberger Aviation Museum: The Gift That Made It Possible

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan, CC BY-SA 3.0. The rebuild was paid for, in part, by people whose lives were directly bent by the events on display. Ric Elias, the CEO of Red Ventures, was a passenger on Flight 1549. He gave the museum a million dollars. Lonely Planet, the travel publisher, gave another five hundred thousand....

Image: RadioFan | CC BY-SA 3.0