The Air & Space article acknowledged the efforts that many
made to separate "normal" flying from the combat simulation programs.
The FAA was not receptive to that argument.

The FAA is, unfortunately, pretty top-heavy with retired military -
especially in the airworthiness portions of it. The operators of these
weekend warrior operations are also mostly retired military. Because
of this, the FAA is reluctant to take action against the weekend
warrior operations, and instread blames the plane.

The second crash (first at Texas Air Aces) was a particularly egregious
example of this. It was well known (based on maintenance records) that
the plane did not have the AD complied with, and while at first some
claimed aerobatics were not being done, the video from the other plane
put paid to that - the plane was being overstressed. Despite this, the
entire fleet was hit with additional (and unnecessary) AD compliance
burdens while Texas Air Aces continued to operate.

This was followed by an investigation at the Houston FSDO, alleging
that Texas Air Aces was operating improperly and that the Houston FSDO
knew about it. Some people were fired or reassigned over this, but in
the end it was just another FAA investigation, followed by business as
usual. I caused the one person at the FSDO who actually knew something
about aerobatics to quit in disgust.

If the FAA were to separate out the T-34's being used for ACM as a
separate group (the one responsible for all the accidents) this would
be tantamount to shutting down the weekend warrior operations that use
it. The pool of T-34 owners might be big enough (or not) to support
the development costs of a 'fix' but the much-smaller pool of weekend
warrior operations certainly isn't big enough. Also, since everyone
knows this sort of damage is cumulative (especially with Aluminum
spars) their planes would be pretty much worthless. That would be a
big enough hit to bankrupt most of them.

Because my home field is also home to the acknowledged T-34 expert
mechanic in the area (he also owns his own T-34), I've met quite a few
T-34 owners and know a couple of them fairly well. Their planes all
had their spars inspected after the first accident, and everyone knows
there's nothing wrong with them. Let's just say these weekend warrior
operations are not exactly popular in the T-34 community.

Michael