Divert Airfields: Selection Criteria and the Pre-Show Brief

An Air Boss training reference on divert airfield planning: how divert fields are identified, evaluated, and briefed before an airshow so that if a performer has to leave the box mid-show, the decision of where they go was already made — not improvised in the moment.

Covers the three FAA/ICAS performance categories and their search radii, the four suitability criteria every candidate field has to clear (runway, length, distance, communications), a worked example showing why the nearest field isn’t always the right one, arresting-gear fields as a special case, and how it all comes together on the divert table and sectional chart used in the pre-show brief.

Source: FAA AC 91-45, ICAS airshow performance show line guidance, and airshow-divert briefing methodology.

This is a training reference, not a substitute for current FAA publications or the Certificate of Waiver / event-specific briefing package for any given show.