Sullenberger Aviation Museum: Named for the Miracle

The aviation museum near Charlotte Douglas Airport was begun in the early nineteen nineties by Floyd and Lois Wilson as the Carolinas Aviation Museum. For decades it quietly built a collection focused on aviation history from the Carolinas region. In two thousand twenty-two, the museum was renamed the Sullenberger Aviation Museum in honor of Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who on January fifteenth, two thousand nine, glided US Airways Flight fifteen forty-nine onto the Hudson River after a bird strike took out both engines, saving all one hundred fifty-five passengers.

That flight had taken off from LaGuardia bound for Charlotte, making it a story this city claimed as its own. The museum reopened under the new name in June of two thousand twenty-four.