Warbird Information Exchange

Tuesday's "belly landing" of a Snowbird plane at 15 Wing Moose Jaw is being compared to a minor fender bender, but the entire fleet is still being temporarily grounded.

The CT-114 tutor did suffer some damage upon landing after a training flight, but both pilots were not hurt.

Major Chris Hope, team lead of the Canadian Forces Snowbirds, said the fact that this incident was relatively minor is due to two factors.

"The fact that the airplane stayed upright on the runway, came to rest in a fairly short distance is a tribute to both the people that maintain it and the design of the airplane itself," said Hope.

Because of the accident, the Snowbirds are taking an "operational pause" and not flying until the cause can be determined.

Hope noted this incident has by no means decreased his confidence in the fleet.

"I've got almost 5,000 hours on this machine. It's like my baby," he said. "I'm as comfortable putting this on as I am my pair of blue jeans."

This accident is not expected to impact the air show season. The Snowbirds' first official performance will be May 3 in Moose Jaw.

it seems like they do 6000 shows a year with no problems. One problem and they ground them. I guess it's better to be safe and take all the proper steps.

Correct. It seems like the Snowbirds get grounded once a year and the news makes a big deal about the grounding and how old the airplanes are as if they could fall on your house at any moment. The reality here is that they push the planes pretty hard so when something breaks they want to be very sure the same fault won't repeat itself and possibly hurt someone.

The thing is, Canadian culture is built on complaining. Right now the Snowbirds are flying outdated junk, if they upgraded the fleet we'd be moaning at the pointless expenditure of tax dollars and if they disband the team we'd complain about that too. As the commercials say, it's a part of our heritage.

-Tim

Well the thing with the Tutor is that the military retired the type 11 years ago so the only application the Tutor currently serves is that of demonstration aircraft for the famed Snowbirds. Don't get me wrong, I love that the Snowbirds proudly fly the Canadian built Canadair Tutor but I am an aviation enthusiast. For the average lay-person though, the concept of using an obsolete training aircraft for the purposes of flying at air shows seems foreign and should anything like this minor incident happen the media is all too quick to jump all over it and put a negative slant to the story. Sadly it's the nature of the business.