Rob PegoraroLarge-scale flyovers without proper notice are rude–and an insult to avgeeks
The past two days have featured some of the most impressive airshow performances in D.C. skies in years–but I, a card-carrying avgeek, saw almost none of them. I’m blaming that on the Trump administration, and I don’t think I’m wrong.
Wednesday night, I missed all but the end of a flyover that concluded with a B-2 bomber accompanied by a formation of F-35 fighters–I heard the roar of the smaller jets as I was exiting a grocery store but only saw one or two reflected in the windows of an office building across the street. Thursday afternoon, I didn’t catch any of an unusual grouping of two B-52s and pairs of F-15s, F/A-18s and F-35s.
I was in the wrong place twice (which is why I’m illustrating this post with a picture of an F-16 formation over Nationals Park before 2025’s home opener) because the organizers of the Freedom 250 series of events on the Malls did not specify flight times in their announcement of these flyovers.
The people running this decidedly partisan event also didn’t use their X account to offer updates on flyover scheduling. I should have instead checked photographer and aviation enthusiast Andrew Leyden, who has been relaying updates there.
(He’s also on Bluesky but not repeating everything that he posts on X, to my dismay.)
From looking at Reddit, I see that I have company in being perplexed by the lack of a heads-up and wondering why there’s no published schedule. It appears that I’ll continue to be left guessing over the remaining days of flyovers–through July 10.
That’s not how this is supposed to work: People on the ground deserve to know when they’ll see their taxpayer dollars in action like this. They don’t have to be total aerospace nerds to appreciate a demonstration of engineering in action–and the piloting skills required to fly so precisely.
And even if folks on the ground somehow have zero interest in aviation, they still might want to know when not to schedule a call to avoid people on the other end thinking they’re about to be on the receiving end of an airstrike.
We know how to do this correctly. I can plan to watch for Arlington National Cemetery flyovers in support of military funerals because I get a text and an e-mail a few days before from the District’s AlertDC system; although those alerts had grown spotty by the time I wrote an explainer about flyovers for Greater Greater Washington in 2023, they’ve been much more reliable recently.
For more involved aerial performances, organizers have even fewer reasons to leave people guessing. The May 8, 2025 “Arsenal of Democracy” flyover that commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe had a starting time of 12:10 p.m. published weeks in advance. And six years ago, even in the middle of pandemic-induced chaos, we knew when to step outside to watch the July 4, 2020 flyovers above the Mall that Trump ordered up because those, too, came with a start time published three days before.
This is far from the worst example of the second Trump administration falling below the low standards of the first one, but it belongs somewhere on that list.
#airShow #avgeek #aviation #B2 #B52 #F15 #F35 #FA18 #FA19 #flyover #flyovers #Freedom250 #GreatAmericanStateFair #July4 #militaryAviation #soundOfFreedom
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