When the initial flying training ensues, the clips of two-seat trainers landing clearly have some two-seaters landing with only a pilot in the back seat and an empty front seat, although they are supposed to be training flights with both an instructor and a student pilot aboard.
Near the end, when Little Mike is up in the air with Big Mike, Little Mike is in the wrong seat. Two-seat airplanes of that time were balanced assuming the pilot would be in the rear-most seat. This was because the forward seat, already being at the center-of-gravity, had no real impact on the balance. With nobody in the rear seat the plane would be too nose heavy to even get off the ground, much less fly as it did in the movie.
Lt George E. M. Kelly was killed while flying a Curtiss Model D pusher airplane. However, he was killed while trying to land the airplane, not as the result of loss of control from altitude, as depicted in the movie.
Camp Travis was located northeast of downtown San Antonio, Texas, which has no mountains. Yet, "Camp Travis" in the movie has significant mountains in the distance during the flying scenes.