We do airshows because they are cool. Lots of us love airplanes. Humans do all kinds of activities for entertainment that are not strictly justifiable returns on investment. I hope we never get that boring, though every year we do seem to go that direction.
>insightful cynicism.
So in response you select the most naive take?
I'm totally in agreement that armed forces are there for reasons you described. But an "air show" is a massive and sometimes separate Venn diagram. There are air shows where main thing is thousands of private airplanes coming from across the country to be together and meet up and have fun.
Put it other way, if armed forces decided it's not worth the recruitment investment and pulled out, air shows would still happen :). For most sizes air shows, the biplane aerobatic stunt done by a crazy local 50 year old real estate agent, is way more fun than the c5 galaxy transporter showing "short takeoff" :-)
The other factor is showing how good you are: sure, you can do formation flying in an Extra 300 or a C150, but doing it in a fighter jet show precission and skill, because it will not forgive you as easy as a slower moving plane.
I saw a RedBull race and was impressed about the agility of the pilots.
But I like jets more because they go faster. And they have afterburners. And they go vertical faster than any propeller plane will ever be able to. And the margin of error is smaller. Espcially closer to the ground.
The margins, that completely depends on the pilot and act design. You can make margins arbitrarily small at any speed :).
(As an imperfect example - a world rally car going through a 80kph blind corner over a crest on snow between the trees is not necessarily more of a margin / less of skill or spectacle than F1 taking a tarmac open corner at 200kph:)
I think it's interesting how as humans we tend to sort into valuing one of these much more than the other, though.
I like the rally car and the aerobatic piston plane a lot.
I want to like F1 and the fast jets more... but after being initially blown away I get bored pretty quick. I think what they're doing is incredibly cool and I can appreciate it but...
But the dude upthread is the exact opposite.
[I do think you need to be more of a "car guy" to like rally and more of a "plane guy" to like what the little planes do. The stuff that is big and loud and fast is easier to appreciate. But I know plenty of people who really know their stuff that still prefer the big and loud and fast].
I have seen so many military display teams. Yes, I like the roar. But they blur together.
> sure, you can do formation flying in an Extra 300 or a C150,
But that's not what we watch Extra 330s do. We watch them do other things that are nuts that are also not so easily forgiven. I have fond memories of seeing Patty Wagstaff, Sean Tucker, and Rob Holland (rip). (And before that, Amelia Reid in her 150...)
I've been to a few air shows and even f22 with its vector thrusting, is not (to me) as impressive as the little prop aerobatics doing things that make me (even with a bit of flight training) wonder how is that even possible :). They are typically closer & slower (so you can appreciate the action better), and just pack so much more stuff and maneuvers right there where you can see them - the density / bang for the buck is far greater. By necessity, military jets are fly bys - they zoom in, pull up and wheee go up fast, then they go away. Then 2 minutes later they zoom in, cross each other impressively closely, then they fly away for a bit. It's exciting and fun don't get me wrong, but when I plan my air show day, I plan it around cool little aerobatic planes, not the military jets.
YMMV :). But my point in this thread is:
1. Yes, absolutely, military is there for recruitment
2. Military recruitment flying is empathically not all there is to an air show to all the people, and there exist air shows with minimal to no armed force presence.
Why do people go see rocket launches?
People fly air shows with crop dusters.
It's a superset of the reasons you poorly articulated, and those reasons would include the fact it's cool. Cool things can help both recruitment and morale, and the US military seems to recognize that: https://armedforcessports.defense.gov/Sports/Esports/
If this is just meant to be another comment on the situation which comes with an implicit grain of salt, then the browbeating doesn't make sense.
> So in response you select the most naive take?
As well as your reply to me now, as having an unduly negative tone... at least, given the lack of substance or importance.
(Ironically, I have less of hang up on meaningful arguments delivered with edge than most people.)
Both are unprofessional comments, but only the original was dishonest. The "too many comments" shtick is a thought terminating cliche that shouldn't be encouraged on HN.
The military participates in airshows because it's good for morale, because it helps showcase capabilities, because it's good PR for military expenditures, and because it's good for recruitment. All of these effects are mostly because it's cool.
The other people flying in airshows are flying there because they love aviation and because it's cool (not so much the money :)
Maximally correct answer is "there are many reasons with complex interplay", and those reasons do include the fact it's cool! Being cool has interplay with morale, recruitment, and even their ham-fisted attempt at referencing geopolitics.
They'd be "more right" if they said in addition, but they just straight up said "No."
(Also where did you read a too many comments shtick?)
> No. They are for recruitment and showing other nations what is on hand in case they want to mess with them.
That's what he said.
The net benefit is marketing, and little else. As much as I enjoy watching airshow jet maneuvers, I have to acknowledge that the USSR only sent their Sukhoi pilots on-tour as a publicity stunt to increase their exports. Same goes for the US, France and China.
20 pilot deaths since 1946 (80 years ago), but only 2 pilot deaths since 2000 (25 years ago).
I wouldn't really call that "stomach-churning losses"?
They do it because it’s awesome and it is one of the few opportunities they get to show off their gear to the public!
Displays of flying death machines to glorify the state are BORING.
But some people really like circuses.
There are the patrouille Suisse, patrouille de France, Frecce Tricolori...
After the Ramstein Air Base disaster security was tightened a lot though.
It is worth mentuoning though they do all that in trainer jets, not actual fighter jets. Which is not that cool. I would loved it more of they would fly actual fighters.
For that I'd say it's that France is saving its actual fighters for combat units because it doesn't has enough jets, unlike the US
As well as private aviation has a different standing in the US in my experience.
Saying "not a thing" might have been to absolute, but my impression is that flight shows are much more known and I would assume more common in the US.
UK list, for example: https://www.air-shows.org.uk/2025/04/uk-airshow-calendar-202...
Rest of Europe: https://www.air-shows.org.uk/2025/04/european-airshow-calend...
I visit a small western French city nearly every year that has an airshow fly out of their small airport (with a nearby French fighter base), yearly, with aircraft spanning WWII era fighters to flyovers from the Patrouille de France and a Rafale.
This, from what I see, is pretty much identical to many USA 'airshows'.
Military propaganda absolutely is about strictly justifiable returns on investments.
Did some cursory searches/math and it looks like about 1-2% of aerial shows in the US have a fatality (1-2 deaths annually with about 2000 shows on average over the last 20 years). If those numbers are correct (and they may very well not be as it’s a mix of LLM and Google quick searches) 1-2% doesn’t seem worth it.
Edit: I’m an idiot. .1-.2%. Seems a bit silly still but not as bad as I thought.
That is likely true. However, it is a heck of a demonstration of pilot skill. The Blue Angels somewhat regularly post in-cockpit views of their airshow practice and it is wild how tight a formation they fly; I really recommend seeking out some of those videos, it is totally worth it. Well, for me at least :). It is not unheard of (but not common) for them to inadvertently make contact, since they fly like 18 inches apart, but given they have nearly identical vectors it does not often result in a crash.
Don't trust LLMs. They are bullshit machines.
Your penalty is to read escapist literature like P.G. Wodehouse for 2 weeks.
Even more people died at the Hillsborough disaster than died at the Ramstein air show, so I guess we should never have sports events at stadiums anymore.
More people died at the Station Nightclub fire, so I guess we can never have nightclubs anymore.
I could go on and on. Yes, we should take all precautions and be safe as possible for events, but everything has some risk.
Awe inspiring and absolutely terrifying
Contrary to popular belief, war is mostly about public opinion, not raw strength. Even since (before) roman times, you almost never fight to the last man, you fight until you route the enemy.
...and unfortunately sometimes also military mistakes, but fortunately this doesn't happen often.
What's the purpose of motor sports? What's the purpose of a firework? What's the purpose of extreme sports exhibitions? mountain climbing expeditions?
One can acknowledge the necessity of having a military while at the same time questioning the magnitude of defense spending.
Personal take-home pay for physicians is 8-10% of total US healthcare spending ($5tr). (or 20%/$1.11t for "physician and clinical services" overall which includes doctors, clinical staff, admin, and overhead costs.)
US total spending on pharmaceuticals is $1 tr; net spending on outpatient prescription drugs is $600b.
The DoD's total spending is $961.6b for FY 2026.
There's little argument against reforming both military spending and healthcare spending in the US, but (as Scott Galloway says) it's awfully hard to find a prominent politician who vocally supports reforming both these (not one at the expense of the other). So, the out-of-control spending/borrowing will continue.
Anyway, as to this crash, all other considerations apart, E/A-18Gs (electronic warfare planes) cost 60% more than F-18s. Who authorized flying them in an airshow?
This is a bad faith rebuttal that intentionally tries to distort the comparison.
Here's the salient point you're trying to ignore: many other countries have lower healthcare costs and better health outcomes because they've prioritized investing in healthcare systems that work better for their citizens.
Government budgets are not unlimited and when your country spends nearly $1 trillion/year on the military (more than double the second-biggest spender) on top of a debt pile rapidly approaching $40 trillion, it's reasonable to question whether the people running the show have their priorities straight.
As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized a long time ago, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
To which I'd add a point about socioeconomic death. Of course, that doesn't resonate with people who measure the country's economic situation by stock prices.
> It seems at least as likely to do with the incredibly high salaries we pay doctors.
Doctor wages account for about 8% of healthcare spend in the US, so even if doctors worked for free, you wouldn't even come close to parity with other countries in terms of healthcare costs.
Don't you think something is wrong when the cost of an emergency room visit in much of the country exceeds individuals' median liquid savings?
> And the fact that we use like 50% more healthcare services than a typical single-payer society.
This simply isn't true. Per Kaiser Family Foundation: "The U.S.’s higher spending on providers is driven more by higher prices than higher utilization of care. Patients in the U.S. have shorter average hospital stays and fewer physician visits per capita, while many hospital procedures have been shown to have higher prices in the U.S. "
I think it beyond anything that could be construed as honesty to call such advocacy "good faith".
Let the people have their stupid circuses. The actual cost of airshows is fairly low on an annual basis. The DOD is gonna make a bunch of C5s pack random crap around, make a bunch of pilots do training hours, make a bunch of NG units practice crowd control, might as well use all that expense to put on a show. Better for PR and for morale and for training that way (turns out everyone gives more of a crap about doing a good job when the public is there).
It's not just about the numbers themselves, it's about what they signal in terms of priorities.
Is it really so strange to question whether a country with $40 trillion in debt that spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its war machine - more than 2x the amount spent by the second-largest military spender in the world - has its priorities straight?
The saddest thing about healthcare in America is that it's working exactly as designed. The high costs are a feature, not a bug. And large numbers of the people who are an emergency room visit away from a financial crisis cheer the products of a military-industrial complex that has produced enough firepower to destroy the planet thousands of times over.
Same reason as for military parades.
I remember going to an air show when I was 12 with a good friend. Walking through the C-5 and then seeing a thunderbirds display just captured my friends imagination in a way that’s hard to describe. He ended up becoming a Marine Aviator and basically started planning that path that day.
Immediately after a show like this, yes, it looks foolish to lose 2 combat planes and almost 4 aircrew for a performative event. Looking at it more generally, it's a tradeoff.
For the audience - we love airplanes and love seeing them. I personally prefer the ground portion of air shows, where I can see and sometimes touch the airplanes up close, talk to the pilots and engineers, and generally have a nice day outside :). The aerial component is impressive too, depending on the show. Sometimes it's a bit drawn out.
For the organizers, typically it's a mix of profit and also organizer enthusiasm - a LOT of air show is basically hard-working volunteers.
For the participants, depends - the private entries are there for fun and visibility and showpersonship, cammarederie etc. The armed forces are there to promote and recruit and invoke patriotism and show off and impress.
Ultimately though, if airplanes aren't your kink, you probably won't emotionally / internally understand and that's ok. It's like world rally championship or formula 1 or anything redbull does, a risky entertaining spectacle.
I'm sure there's some bean-counter calculus involving recruitment, PR, demonstration of capabilities, they were going to be doing training flights anyway so why not do a few in public, etc. but they're more rationalisations rather than reasons.
I hope it stays that way too. A world where we take everything away unless it fits into the 5 year ROI spreadsheet sounds dreadful. In any case there'll a long tail of nth-order outcomes that we can't simply reduce down to a risk-reward calculation.
There's probably some deep reason why humans just have a drive to show off their awesome stuff.