Rob Holland’s fatal crash on approach to Joint Base Langley-Eustis was a gut punch to the airshow community. The accident occurred on April 24, 2025 while Holland was landing his highly modified MX Aircraft MXS in advance of an airshow. Witness accounts and the preliminary investigation record showed a straight-in landing, a series of porpoises, a sudden pitch up and loss of control, and the aircraft came down short of the runway edge. The flight was not a display pass when it ended in tragedy.

The initial technical evidence from the on-scene examination pointed to a missing counterweight access plug from an elevator compartment on the left elevator. Investigators recovered the plug behind the wreckage and documented damage consistent with that plug having contacted the airframe. The early factual record makes this a maintenance and modification control problem for an experimental exhibition airplane, not a routine demonstration-margin error.

That distinction matters. Airshow safety conversations often zero in on showline geometry, spectator separation, and minimum altitudes. Those are absolutely critical. For military-hosted events they are spelled out in doctrine such as AFI 11-209 which requires designated spectator areas and a 1,500 foot minimum between the spectator area and the show line for military aircraft demonstrations unless a formal waiver is issued. The instruction also reiterates that aircraft will not overfly the spectator area unless specifically waived. Those are strong, necessary controls when performers are flying high energy routines in close proximity to the public.

Civil aviation guidance in the United States follows the same risk logic with show line minima that scale with aircraft category and speed. The longstanding FAA practice and industry guidance put the show line at a minimum of 500 feet from spectators for slower aircraft and at substantially greater distances for higher performance aircraft, with practical guidance that Category I fast jets should operate with show lines in the 1,200 to 1,500 foot range whenever possible. The principle is simple. Faster aircraft carry more energy and need larger buffers to protect people on the ground.

Those proximity standards, however, only partially intersect with what happened at Langley. Holland was landing, not performing along a show line. That means the standard airshow separation metrics did not directly prevent this accident. Instead the preliminary evidence points to maintenance practice and the risks inherent in heavily modified, experimental exhibition aircraft operating from busy military airfields during show weeks. The operational environment around a base hosting an airshow is complicated. There are competing priorities for runway use, transient performers, base security, and public access. Any single weak link in maintenance or preflight control can have catastrophic consequences whether it happens in the aerobatic box or on short final.

So where do we go from here in practical terms? From the cockpit and flightline perspective the fixes are straightforward and achievable.

  • Treat transient exhibition airplanes as higher risk. Require a documented maintenance and modification audit on arrival to the host field. That should include physical verification of fasteners, safety-wiring, cotter pins, lockwire, threadlocker and any non-standard plugs or covers used to access control system components. The verification must be signed by both the performer and a qualified inspector from either the host unit or a recognized civil inspector. This is not novel. Military demos and demonstration teams already use rigorous checklists. Extend that discipline to visiting experimental performers.

  • Publish a simple mandatory checklist for exhibition category airplanes operating at airshows hosted on military fields. The checklist should include critical control-surface retention hardware, immediate preflight control-surface rigging checks, and verification that temporary access plugs carry positive retention methods that meet a minimum standard. If a modification leaves a required tool in the cockpit or an access plug unsecured, the aircraft does not fly to the show line.

  • Reexamine transient arrival and departure routing when performers use the primary runway that doubles as a show line landmark. If the approach path brings aircraft directly over or adjacent to spectator areas during non-displayed flight operations, consider establishing dedicated approach corridors that keep arrival and departure traffic offset from spectator lines until aircraft have landed and are clear of display areas. This is an operational mitigation with immediate effect.

  • Clarify waiver policy and transparency for proximity reductions. AFI 11-209 already allows showline reductions via waiver. Those waivers, and the risk assessments that justify them, should be documented and published to local stakeholders including the show’s Flight Operations Director. Transparency builds accountability.

  • Finally, push for better pre-event information flow between civilian performers, the FAA, the host MAJCOM, and the NTSB when experimental exhibition aircraft are scheduled. That includes ensuring records of modifications and the rationale for access plugs, removable weights, or non-standard hardware are available to host inspectors. If an aircraft carries an owner installed accessibility feature that requires positive mechanical retention, the host must know what acceptable retention looks like before the airplane taxi’s for the first time.

We owe that practical checklist mentality to every performer and to the public who come to airshows to be inspired. The proximate cause at Langley, as the preliminary investigative record suggests, was not a failure of showline geometry. It was a failure of retention hardware and the systems that should catch such an omission before flight. Fixing how we treat maintenance and modifications for high‑energy exhibition aircraft will yield the fastest safety return. Tightening runway-to-spectator routing and enforcing already existing proximity standards will reduce the exposure for both performers and spectators when site geometry forces tighter margins.

Rob Holland was one of the best of our community. The work ahead is not about punitive measures. It is about practical, procedural changes that reduce the chance that a single misplaced plug, an unsecured fastener, or a misfiled maintenance entry becomes a public tragedy. Airshows are inherently risky. We accept that risk to share flight with the public. We do not have to accept preventable maintenance and procedural failures. The checklist we ask pilots to run before takeoff must mean something, and the organizations that host airshows must have the authority and the processes to verify it. If we can draw one clear lesson from Langley it is this: when spectacle and runway intersect, inspection and procedure must be uncompromising.