Facts About Sporting Event Flyovers

Earlier this year, I saw that one of the bombers from Barksdale AFB, did the flyover at the NASCAR race in New Hampshire.  I thought that it seemed like a really long trip to do a flyover, and it made me curious.

Every year the military gets about 850 requests for flyovers at sporting events. They have even received requests for Little League Baseball opening games.

It costs taxpayers about $6,000 per plane for each hour of flight time.  So if they go far enough, a flyover can cost anywhere from $36,000 to $80,000.

The U. S. Marines are the only military branch that are allowed to do flyovers at night. Other branches can only do them in daylight hours.

I had been told that retired pilots instead of active duty pilots to do the flyovers, but after a little research, I found out that they use them as training missions for new pilots. (???)

One more thing that I found false was that the military are not the only people allowed to do flyovers at major sporting events, there are private companies that do them to... like the Black Diamond Jet Team.  Check out their video... (I am just glad they didn't use the theme from Top Gun in it.)