The Missing Man Formation
A flight of aircraft passes overhead in tight formation with one gap left open — the deliberate absence is the entire tribute.
How it actually works
In a missing man formation, a group of aircraft — commonly four, flying the "finger four" pattern — flies past leaving a visible gap where one aircraft should be, and that aircraft (or the whole formation) pulls up and away, climbing out of the group. It is flown as a tribute at funerals and memorials for fallen aviators, well-known service members and veterans, and other notable figures. The custom traces back to World War I, when Royal Air Force squadrons developed the habit of flying tight, rigid return formations specifically so ground crews could count aircraft at a glance and know immediately who had not made it back.
It reads as a distinctly American Air Force invention, but the roots are older and not American at all — it started with the RAF in WWI as a practical headcount method before it became a deliberate tribute. The first flypast in something like today's form is generally traced to the 1931 funeral of aviator Charles "Speed" Holman, and the maneuver was flown for the funeral of Britain's King George V in 1936 before American forces adopted it more widely after WWII. It has since spread well beyond military funerals into motorsport and professional sports tributes for fallen drivers and athletes.
Rooted in WWI-era RAF return-formation headcounts; first documented funeral flypast 1931 (Charles "Speed" Holman); adopted by U.S. forces post-WWII.