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Military and Event Flyovers
FOTPAM offers military flyovers to honor and remember fallen heroes. We can perform our flyover services during burials or ceremonies of remembrance. We offer different formations including the missing man formation. We look forward to honoring your loved ones.
If you're having an upcoming event-from sporting events and graduations to parades-our expert team of pilots can perform a flyover during the opening ceremonies. Flyovers are a great way to honor you event and to raise the excitement level.
Looking heavenward you cannot help but shed a tear... mournful... lonesome... a hole that screams out almost as loudly as the roar of the engines that pass overhead.
This is The Missing Man Formation... perhaps the most magnificent and solemn aerial maneuver ever seen. It symbolizes the singleness of purpose that members of a military organization must achieve to accomplish their mission.
The rapid departure of the wingman, his upward path curving westward, represents the soul of our fallen comrade, leaving the close bonds of his military organization, ascending to God in Heaven.
The continuation of the formation on its assigned course symbolizes the steadfast commitment of our fighting forces to achieve the goals of civilian leadership, regardless of the sacrifices required to keep our country free.
The vacant formation position reminds us that our fallen comrade's sacrifice will never be forgotten; that the debt of gratitude we owe this nation's defenders can never be repaid.
Whether flown with the wingman spiraling off into the great beyond or, flown consistently with that awful hole where a buddy should be... this dignified, almost painful to watch maneuver is a part of military combat history.
Flight of the Phoenix Escadrille renders this solemn tribute to the memory
of all patriotic men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice to
keep America the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
In modern day and times, Escadrille solemnly extends the Fly-Past honor to worthy patriots.....aviators and aviatrix who have flown West.....both civilian and military.....veteran and non-veteran.........who have contributed greatly to the noble causes of freedom in the American way of life; and as inspiration to those left behind
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The genesis of this maneuver is one shrouded in years of faded memories, long fought battles and countless missions almost a century old. Rumored to have begun when British fighter pilots flew over the funeral of Manfred 'The Red Baron' von Richthofen as a sign of respect by his fellow aces, the formation does find its birth in World War I. At some point during the Great War, the RAF pilots created an aerial maneuver known as 'The Fly Past'... whether this was before or after the alleged von Richthofen loss is unknown. But it is British in origin and it was used infrequently and privately during the War.
By Steve Dean Flight of the Phoenix Aviation Museum www.fotpam.org 903 790 7435