Seahawks Pregame Fireworks Burst Beside an Army Black Hawk Mid-Flyover, and the Army Says None Hit It

Pregame fireworks at Seattle’s Lumen Field went off around the last of four US Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters as the formation crossed the stadium on November 2, 2026, before the Seahawks hosted the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football. Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) says no firework struck the helicopter and no crew member was injured.

The flyover was part of the game’s Salute to Service Army night. US Army photos of the pass on DVIDS identify the crews as members of the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, 7th Infantry Division.

What the video shows

Video filmed by a fan and published by MyNorthwest shows the helicopters arriving from the south end zone. The first three had passed over the Hawks Nest stands at the north end when fireworks launched from the tower above it appeared to burst in the path of the fourth.

From some angles the bursts seem to reach the trailing aircraft, which is why so many viewers assumed it had been hit. The helicopter kept flying behind the other three, and MyNorthwest noted that no damage was apparent in the footage.

Timing looks like the crux. The outlet also pointed out that flyovers are normally timed to the closing bars of the national anthem, but on Monday the anthem had already ended just before the Black Hawks reached the stadium.

The crews had practiced the flyover during the week, and all four helicopters returned safely to JBLM near Tacoma, The Spokesman-Review reported.

What the Army says

“We can confirm that no fireworks struck the aircraft, no aircraft were damaged, and no members of the aircrew were injured,” US Army Lt. Col. Cynthia R. Holuta said in a JBLM statement reported by KOMO News.

Aerospace Global News reported that the formation was four UH-60M Black Hawks from the 2-158th Assault Helicopter Battalion. The Army’s photo captions name only the brigade.

As of November 4, AeroCorner had found no public explanation from the Seahawks, the NFL or the Army for why the pyrotechnics fired while an aircraft was still overhead. Aerospace Global News reported that it was not known whether an investigation would be opened.

How a stadium flyover gets cleared

An NFL stadium is restricted airspace on game day. The FAA’s standing sporting-event notice, FDC 4/3621, bans flying within 3 nautical miles (about 3.5 miles, 5.6 km) of any stadium with 30,000 or more seats, up to 3,000 feet above the ground.

The ban runs from one hour before an NFL game until one hour after it ends. Department of Defense flights are exempt, as are aircraft working with air traffic control, law enforcement and air ambulances, while event and broadcast aircraft need an FAA airspace waiver.

On the military side, flyovers fall under DoD Instruction 5410.19, Volume 4, the Pentagon’s 2021 rulebook for community outreach. It makes the event sponsor responsible for any FAA waiver an aerial event needs, and it recommends 60 days of lead time.

The same instruction says aerial demonstrations at public events are flown on programmed training hours, at no additional cost to the government. It ranks sporting-event flyovers by their outreach value, favoring games with a national or significant regional broadcast, which describes a Monday Night Football game well.

What the paperwork does not settle is the cue on the night. Holding the fireworks until the last aircraft clears the bowl comes down to coordination between the stadium’s show crew and the formation, and a helicopter crosses a stadium far more slowly than a fighter jet, so it stays over the launch point longer.

Stadium flyovers have drawn scrutiny before. In August, Airlink’s low pass over a Cape Town rugby stadium drew a regulator review after video appeared to show one of its jets passing through pyrotechnic smoke fired from the roof.