(15 pix - click pic to enlarge)

 My wife and I recently made a short and fast road trip from Indiana to Charlotte North Carolina to visit our daughter and her husband. We traveled on Friday and Monday, so we had just the weekend to visit. Fortunately we packed quite a bit into those two days, including a hot air balloon ride for me (son-in-law runs High Life Ballooning - ride post coming soon), and a stop at the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte to see the Miracle on the Hudson, the US Airways Airbus A320 made famous by Sully Sullenberger and crew. As it turns out, the crew was based in Charlotte, the airplane was headed there when they ingested the geese that shut down both engines, and over 100 of the 150 passengers were from Charlotte. Charlotte seems the perfect place for the airplane to be on display.

 The successful ditching of the aircraft in the Hudson River not only kept everyone on board alive, but it really captured the attention of the nation. Being able to see the airframe in person and imagine what the experience was like for those involved was very cool. The display currently has just the fuselage, but plans include re-attaching the wings to bring the airplane back to pretty much the condition it was in right after the water landing. The exhibit is planned to be officially opened on January 15, 2012 - exactly three years after the incident.

 The largish A320 has replaced a lot of the aircraft that were on display inside the Carolinas Aviation Museum. Hopefully they'll be able to enlarge the facility at some point in the future to make room for a lot more of the other aircraft. They do have many interesting aircraft still on display, including the beautiful Piedmont DC-3, you just don't see much of them in these pictures.

 As you can see in the first pic above, they have a small seating area with a continuous presentation of the ditching event. It's important to remember that this is really just a temporary display as work is being carried out preparing the airframe for a more complete and thorough presentation. There's no doubt tho, even in this temporary configuration, seeing the Miracle on the Hudson aircraft in person is a great experience - I highly recommend it.

(click pic to enlarge)

 It's no surprise that the wings had been cut off the airplane for both the initial transport as well as what would be the eventual trip to Charlotte. I immediately gravitated to the wing attach area because this was a great opportunity to see the design and engineering of this critical and complex area of the airframe. More pix on this farther down (on my second trip around)

(click pic to enlarge)