Welcome to the SFO Museum Aviation Collection

Welcome to our online aviation collection! SFO Museum holds over 162,000 objects related to the history of commercial aviation and airline industry. Our collection focus emphasizes the West Coast of the United States and the Pacific region, as well as the formation and development of San Francisco International Airport. This site features a selection of digitized materials from our museum, archive, and library collections, with more objects added on an ongoing basis. Our collection includes significant holdings on the histories of San Francisco International Airport, and major airlines such as Pan American World Airways, and United Airlines. Other highlights include photographs, uniform pieces, timetables, insignia, luggage labels, posters, and airsickness bags.

How to use this site.

Our holdings are divided into three “collections”—Museum, Library, and Archive—each of which has multiple categories and subcategories of various object types. We invite you to explore the collection by clicking on any of the category links above and to deepen your exploration by clicking on any of the hyperlinks (in gold text) within each object’s descriptive information. Specific searches, such as for airlines, aircraft, airports, object types, or names of designers, donors, and historical figures, may be executed by typing a query in the "Search the collection" box at the top right corner of the page or by clicking on Advanced Search. Most search results allow further refinement through additional filters. Please see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for additional information.