I thought this was rather interesting.

I never really realized how complicated flyovers are. (I know this is not DIRECTLY related to the Panthers, but we do have flyovers every once in a while.)


Buzzing stadiums all in a day’s work
MILITARY FLYOVERS
By DAN HILLIARD - [email protected]

BEAUFORT — To keep their flight qualifications current, pilots at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort have to spend 140 hours in the air per year. That amounts to about one training flight every three days, and sometimes it even means flying over a high school football game.

If a school or civic organization is willing to go through the paperwork necessary to request a flyby, most pilots are happy to buzz a stadium on their way home from a training mission, said air station operations officer Maj. Clay Berardi.

Before a football game Oct. 19 at Whitewater High School in Fayetteville, Ga., two Marine pilots screeched over the field.

Assistant principal Mike Vena said he requested the flyby to honor local veterans who had just returned from Iraq.

“You can announce their names and do all sorts of other things,” he said, “but there’s nothing like a flyover. I still had people in my office the following Saturday telling me they had goose bumps when the jets came flying over.”

Certain flights, like the Veterans Day flybys scheduled for Nov. 12 in Beaufort and Bluffton and on Hilton Head Island, are a priority for Corps leadership, Berardi said. Sporting events usually are up to the pilot to decide.

Air station pilots have flown more than 16 flybys this year, he said.

The quick flybys aren’t as simple as they look, however.

Often tired from 100- to 250-mile flights simulating air-to-air combat and tank bombings, pilots have to become extra alert as soon as they begin dropping altitude.

“Every flyby is different,” Berardi said. “If you told me to fly by your front steps at 13 hundred tomorrow, I’d be there plus or minus a second, no problem. But you’ve probably seen on TV where the national anthem ends and the airplanes fly over 20 seconds later. That timing is tricky because your ground speed varies with your altitude.”

A flyby basically mimics a low-altitude tactical bombing run, Berardi said.

That means every flyby receives the same kind of attention, both from ground crews and the pilots themselves, that a real-world situation demands, he said.

“The mechanics of it are identical. Except we don’t simulate dropping bombs on stadiums,” he said. “That would be uncool. We don’t even carry ordnance when we do those things.”

Small aircraft, tall buildings and no-fly zones further complicate flying close to the ground, Berardi said.

Airports generally own a column of airspace around their runways, he said.

When fighter jets dip close to the ground, those no-fly zones become giant invisible obstacles that can drastically alter a pilot’s flight plan.

“Down low, you have to wonder, ‘Is this someone’s airspace?’” he said. “It’s like the difference between side streets and highways.”

The flights are as expensive as they are difficult.

Although detailed information on F/A-18 jet fuel’s cost and costs per-hour of flight have been deemed classified, a jet easily can burn through 1,200 gallons in a single, hourlong flight, Berardi said.

Still, the good will generated by flybys more than offsets the costs, Berardi said.

“In my opinion, it’s our duty to do that,” he said. “For all the noise we make over the skies of Beaufort, we owe it to them to incorporate flybys into our training missions.”

Hilliard is a reporter for the Beaufort Gazette, a McClatchy newspaper.

 

Cool Article.

 

I was at a Panthers game for a flyby once. It was pretty awesome.

 

They do it at Panther games every year on veterans day. Last year they had Apache helicoptors flying by low

 

yep..that was cool. Ive seen a stealth bomber the the race before. those things will make you shit your meal

 

For this year's opener they had the local police helicopter fly over.

 

Fixed

 

That's good to know.

 

police helicoptor

 

that would be a cool thing to have at a kids birthday party....

Happy Birthday dear Mikey....Happy Birthday to you...

ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSHSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH