Military flyovers are kinda cool and inspiring when done at mega sporting events, but they also seem like they are done at pretty much every single game nowadays.
Whether many fans are in attendance or not…
At this past weekend’s Tampa Bay Bucs and Green Bay Packers NFL football game, Fox Sports’ Troy Aikman and Joe Buck could be heard letting their thoughts about military flyovers known.
In the video obtained by Defector media, it appears Aikman and Buck were unaware they were being recorded.
Here is a transcript of the audio:
Geeky Daddy’s Hot Take: Aikman and Buck are not my favorite announce team, but I gotta say, I agree with Buck on this one. There really isn’t a better use of funds than flying over stadiums that are only at 10-25% fan capacity?
Any military flight time is extremely expensive due to the high cost of consumables (such as jet fuel), maintenance and logistics. So where do these funds come from?
Per Newsweek, flyovers are expensed as “training missions” and therefore the funds for these are deducted from training budgets.
The costs of flyovers are deducted from the training budget of the branch that takes part, and the time involved does count towards pilots’ training, however limited and simple the flyby may be.
Past flybys have been criticized as a waste of money, especially after the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas, when jets flew low over the stadium’s closed roof at a reported cost of $450,000.
But in this era of fiscal contraction, I do question whether this is the best use of training budgets.
What are your thoughts on military flyovers? Are you inspired by them or do you think they have been milked to the point of being an unnecessary distraction and waste of money?
Geeky Daddy 