When Wilson is beating up the airfield he's flying a single-seat Boeing P-12/F4B. But when he lands, the aircraft is a Stearman C3, which has a similar tail-fin shape but is twin-seat and has different wing-strutting.
When Ellis and Wilson go off on their death-flight, there is no reason for Ellis ever to have got into the plane at all, given that it's been established that he never flies in his own dangerous aircraft. And then, when he takes the controls, he immediately appears incapable of controlling it even though he is a pilot.