9/11 Memorial Museum. Photo: Lester Balajadia / Shutterstock.com American Airlines and the CR Smith Museum are expanding efforts to preserve the history of September 11, 2001, by making additional items from the airline’s 9/11 collection available to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
The initiative will include artifacts connected to American Airlines Flight 11 and Flight 77, as well as items documenting the response and support that followed the attacks. American is also providing financial support through The Never Forget Fund and contributing to the future National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Visitor Education Center.
“9/11 forever changed our airline, our industry and our world,” said American Airlines CEO Robert Isom. He said the airline has worked over the years to preserve the memories of those who were lost and highlight the care, resilience and humanity shown in the aftermath.
Photo: ShutterstockThe National September 11 Memorial & Museum has already displayed American Airlines artifacts since opening to the public in May 2014. More than 27 million visitors have visited the museum and encountered items connected to the airline, including aircraft fragments, team member identification cards and boarding passes recovered at Ground Zero.
American and the CR Smith Museum now plan to make additional artifacts available, either through donations or an expansion of the museum’s existing long-term loan arrangement.
The CR Smith Museum, located at American Airlines’ Robert L. Crandall Campus in Fort Worth, Texas, currently holds more than 1,000 additional artifacts connected to September 11 and the support that followed.
Among the items being considered are a flag passed from flight deck to flight deck across American’s aircraft in the weeks after the attacks, memorial quilts created in honor of those who died and hundreds of letters and other correspondence sent from around the world to the airline and aviation community.
Beth Hillman, President and CEO of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, said the new material will help preserve the stories of September 11 for future generations.
The museum estimates that more than 100 million Americans were born after September 11 or were too young to remember the attacks. Hillman said this makes the work of preserving the history and ensuring people “never forget” increasingly important.
As a reminder, on September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes in the United States. Two were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York, another struck the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., while a fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to overcome the hijackers. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks, which profoundly changed the United States, the aviation industry and international security.
American Airlines is also providing financial support to the Pentagon Memorial Fund, which honors the 184 people who died at the Pentagon on September 11.
The Pentagon Memorial Fund is preparing for the groundbreaking of a new Pentagon Memorial Visitor Education Center. The planned facility will provide a permanent space focused on the stories, lessons and impact of the attacks.
American also plans to identify artifacts in its collections that could help the future center document the airline’s response to and recovery from the events at the Pentagon.
The initiative comes as the 25th anniversary of September 11 approaches, adding a new chapter to American Airlines’ efforts to preserve artifacts and memories connected to one of the darkest days in the history of commercial aviation.