Understanding the Dallas Mid-Air

It was anything but luck. For decades, airshows have had federally mandated rules that prevent planes from flying over the crowds of people who are watching them fly. The catastrophic, mechanical failure-caused crash of a highly modified North American P-51 race plane into the crowd at Reno in which the pilot and ten spectators were […]

The midair collision at the Wings Over Dallas air show was an exceptionally rare instance. The movements of planes at such events are closely controlled and monitored by air traffic controllers. In fact, the main question that investigators into the Dallas tragedy will be trying to answer is, “How did the collision happen in the […]

The short answer is, yes, they can. The longer answer is that the FAA allows operators of older planes to charge fees for these flights through an exemption. Most older ex-military planes operate under an FAA exemption—few have normal operating certificates, instead flying under one of a few rules that allow them to be flown […]

Warbirds are retired military aircraft that have been restored, largely by civilian owners who purchase the planes on the open market, almost always after the military has retired the model. With hundreds of thousands of American planes built for World War II, following that global conflict, most of those planes were soon either no longer […]