Ultrasonic wave reflection and transmission by planar crack distributions is considered. General expressions for the reflection and transmission coefficients are derived for incident longitudinal and transverse time harmonic plane waves. For low frequencies, closed-form algebraic expressions are given in terms of the geometrical parameters, the material constants, and the incident wavefield. The results have been extended to statistical distributions, and reflection coefficients for equivalent statistical and deterministic distributions of penny-shaped cracks are compared. It is also shown that the Mode-I stress-intensity factor for a distribution of equal-sized cracks can be directly related to reflection data.