Carolinas Aviation Museum (lots of pictures)

Over the weekend I went to the Carolinas Aviation Museum.  Admission is $12 for adults and there is no AAA discount though there are other discounts for military and a few other categories.

I went as part of a Flyertalk Do.  It was interesting going with a group of other frequent travelers since others are more willing to engage the museum staff than I usually am.  We ended up talking to a man for probably a good 30 minutes about the Tomcat and other planes.  He was able to tell us all about military planes and asked us a good bit about commercial aircraft…like why the 737/320 type planes are so popular now and what we thought of the US Airways merger.  We didn’t get his story and it is interesting to see someone under 50 work at such a place.  He said he was going to Chapel Hill in the fall to study military history but I get the impression that he had probably served for a bit and is now going to college or maybe he just really is fascinated by military aircraft.

One thing I didn’t get pictures of is how they still had the intact beverage cart and some personal belongings that were left on the plane (because remember, get yourself out, not your stuff!)  Now all of the stuff is quite recent, but in 20, 30 years it will mark the era for what was in the beverage cart.  I noticed right away that it had the ~16 oz bottles of water instead of the large bottles.  That marks it as being during the time when they charged $2 for beverages.

 The museum isn’t super big and a good portion of it is taken up by the Miracle on the Hudson, but it was interesting to go for that.  I’d go again with the right people, but I probably would not go again until they change the exhibits.