The StuckatTheAirport airport review team is heading to Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) for a short residency and, if we had them, we’d be filling our Amelia Earhart-branded suitcases with our gear.
(image from Purdue University Libraries, Karnes Archives and Special Collections)
According to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, Earhart luggage was sold into the 1990s and came with an Amelia Earhart luggage key, which led some purchasers to believe they possessed her “personal” aircraft or suitcase key.
July 24 marks the birthday of aviation pioneer Amelia Mary Earhart
Atchison, Kansas-born Amelia Earhart was a record setting aviator, the second person to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic and the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the United States.
Among a wide range of other accomplishments.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, went missing on July 2, 1937 somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
The house where Earhart was born is now the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kansas.
Atchison is also home to the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum, which offers a wide variety of Earhart-related educational exhibits and historic artifacts, as well as Muriel — the world’s last remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E — an aircraft identical to the plane Earhart flew on her final flight.
The plane is named after Amelia’s younger sister, Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey.
Here’s a link to our report on a visit we made to the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in 2023.
The International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio also pays tribute to Amelia Earhart with an exhibit devoted to the aviation legend. The collection includes Earhart’s flight suit and nurse’s uniform from WWI, among other things.
