The Most Perfectly Timed Flyover in College Football History

The Florida State Marching Chiefs and the fighter jet pilots pulled off the most perfectly timed fly over in college football/band history at the end of the National Anthem.

[Stuey]

Being from the UK I don’t think I’ll ever understand how that stadium is at a university…!

[danulas]

Speaking as someone who played in a college band, the directors know when the flyover will happen down to the second (Air Force pilots are pretty good at being where they need to be when they need to be there), so they can stretch or shorten phrases if they need to in order to get the timing down. It still takes a lot of work to make sure everyone is synchronized like that, though. Our director really emphasized that we needed to be watching him and following his direction very closely. :)

[bobbyrutz]

Sometimes I feel proud to be an American. Then I remember I'm Canadian.

[vanceduke]

Anyone notice how great that band sounded?

[bobclavile]

I am 76, retired navy 1964-95. What a way to get tears, and Goosepimples at the same time? That was just AWESOME.

[tommyrq]

Lou Holz used to say that the Air Force Academy had the greatest home-field advantage in the NCAA because of flyovers. He would spend the entire pre-game trying to get his teams ready to play and then they’d all gawk at the jets. It takes a TON of coordination to get this right and like all things aviation, the USAF does it right more than any other. They are really, really focused on split-second timing and every USAF general is watching not only to see if they are exactly on-time, but if their four-ship formation is perfect. You’ll always hear them saying “#3 is late” or something like that. If the formation is perfect they usually say nothing, just smile at one another knowingly—knowing the pilots’ squadron and wing commanders will get major kudos because their pilots nailed it. And mistakes are never forgotten. They do major after-action reviews and do a ton of weather (big issue!), pressure, and waypoint analysis to get this right. Ground controllers, practice, rehearsals, the band conductor; all part of a giant team effort. But the lead aircraft is the lead—everything depends on that pilot. Even very small mistakes are noticed and debriefed. Timing, as they say, is everything in aviation.

[noelrivera]

They use a couple of ground controller in the stadium with radio comms, there have rehearsed it days before and take time, speed, distance measurements on landmarks before "TOT" (Time over Target). Computations are made and adjustments numbers done to be able to speed up or slow down as needed. It's a tactical choreograph and it's a beautiful thing when it works right on queue.

[SingerGuy]

It is not unheard of to have the director wearing an earpiece with the music and a click track with audibles in it. He is listening to a countdown, as it were, and he moves his arms in precision to that countdown, while the pilots pass navigation markers at their exact moments. One soundtrack and two finely tuned events that culminate in the perfect flyover. These events don't happen by accident.

[Ghostman]

Something about it all the music, the jets, and the people make my chest swell with pride to be an American. 🇺🇸 ❤️

[HappyTrails]

The flight leads are not given enough credit for how well they time those fly overs.

[K_Chris]

The chills I got from that were insane!! Imagine being there in the stadium, must’ve been incredible

[christopherbernhardt]

For all the people who are commenting but have never been in a marching band before, or directed a band, here's how it actually works.

The flyover people practice weeks ahead of time, usually whenever they are close. For example, Blue Angels homecoming about 50 miles away was just finishing and all of a sudden you notice that the flyovers start practicing the day or two after that. They set targets, practice timing and set speeds in order to reach a certain point at a certain time.

We (the band) then time our pregame, from getting on the field to exiting, to give to the stadium so that they can decide what times everything needs to happen. Football is a show. For example, the UF game said to start at 7:30, but we knew the week before that kickoff was actually set to 7:44. This then allows us to say "Ok, it takes us 2 minutes to do our come on cadence, X seconds to do fanfare / fightsong" and then we have a window where we can realistically start pregame. It takes everyone, though, to understand and feel the tempos. Say we have a flyover and a 3 minute long song is conducted 5% faster. That gives us 9 seconds of extra time that we have to compensate for. This is where the conductor comes into play, especially on the star spangled banner. He can speed up, or slow down as needed so that way we hit the last chord at the second that we know the planes are flying over.

This is harder than you think because the goal is to make the Star Spangled Banner musical, dramatic, and make sense. No, the pilots aren't listening to the band, or even being told to speed up or slow down. They go X knots to hit the stadium at X time. This can go wrong, for example, at our Veteran's Day ceremony one group took a little longer than was timed for. As a result, the flyover happened almost 45 seconds before the anthem was over. That's in the middle of the anthem. It happens.

What I'm trying to say is, don't say the conductor is doing nothing, that's dumb. He's timing us to match with the fighter jets which are essentially a stationary time.

[Willowy]

I live in Brazil, but I spent amazing 7 months in the US back in 2003 for my Doctoratee. I still can't sing this freaking anthem without crying.😂Protect your country people. You don't want to live in a hell hole like mine.

[TheLightningStrm]

Proud FSU Alumni. It was always a blast going to the games, energy at Doak is some of the if not the best college football atmospheres.

[nemochicky]

Now THAT is what should be done at the Super Bowl

[herbrice]

The military loves training flights like these because they are excellent Time On Target practice runs. They need it as much as we love watching them. When no nothings claim its a waste, they are fools. These flights are 100% actual needed flight time training runs. Weather and maintenance delays always allow for things just like this. They even do it when there are no games, but they use dams, bridges, or other “targets”.

[TomgirlTears]

so THIS is where my $8k "textbook" bill goes..

[TheFuryKat]

I teach colorguard at a college in Colorado, and I’ve never seen us pull off the timing of the flyover. Sometimes they fly after the song has ended, sometimes they’re so late we have to start the next song in order to make sure kickoff still happens on time (especially if it’s being televised). No idea if that an us issue or a them issue, or if they’re using Air Force Academy students to do it so there’s some error as they’re learning? Either way, you can see the little fist pump the conductor does in celebration after the song ends, because he’s just trying to hit his marks and is blind to what the planes are doing until they’re overhead. Mad respect for being able to pull that off.

[brantleyforehand]

That’s a great conductor working with great air controllers. The conductor knew the exact time of his band’s performance and the controllers executed it perfectly.

[chrisjacobs]

FSU always gave love and respect for our military, and always appreciated the flyover.

They had a Bone come over so low it looked like it was going to stall out right over Doak. (For those unaware, the Bone is quite a large aircraft.)