Bonanzas arriving at Oshkosh as part of a well-organized formation flight. Planning and practice make this kind of pattern work a no-brainer.

An Aviation Safety Staff Report

When it comes to landing airplanes, nobody does it better than the U.S. Navy. Every landing is filmed from a couple of angles, examined and dissected and given a grade in a culture so stingy of praise that a top-drawer performance merits this blasé notation: OK. If those of us flying in the civilian world were similarly graded, the results might often be too discouraging to discuss.

And we’re not talking about touching wheels to pavement but the act of getting the airplane close enough to the airport to line up on the runway; the fine art of pattern flying. Given the number of Unicom arguments and…