Nine Snowbirds CT-114 Tutor aircraft are scheduled to fly over McMahon Stadium on Sunday as part of the team’s final Grey Cup public appearance before the jets retire at year’s end.
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The Grey Cup championship game will mark the last scheduled public spectacle for the Snowbirds flying CT-114 Tutor jets, a departure planned as Canada’s military demonstration team prepares to retire the aircraft at the end of the year.
Capt. Marc-André Plante, who flies as Snowbird 8, said the occasion brings together “Canada’s demonstration team” and “Canada’s football league,” describing it as a fitting sendoff. He said flying with the Snowbirds has been the “highest honour” in his military career, adding that the team inspires Canadians “to pursue their own forms of excellence.”
The Snowbirds are based out of 15 Wing Air Force base in Moose Jaw, Sask., and have never flown anything but the Tutors. The team has performed roughly 2,700 times for more than 140 million people across North America in more than half a century of service.
At the end of the year, the Tutors are to be retired and replaced by the CT-157 Siskin II, with the team expected to be temporarily grounded until the early 2030s. Plante said the official retirement plan and the future of the planes are outside the crew’s control, and he said federal government announcements in May have not changed the team’s last few months of flying.
Ahead of the game Sunday, the nine aircraft are to set off from Calgary International Airport and fly over the stadium as close as their minimum flight height of about 150 metres from the tallest point in the area they’re flying over. The plan is for the jets to pass over the stadium as Sarah McLachlan finishes her final note of O Canada.
After the flyover, Plante and his squadron are to return to the airport, tuck the planes into a hangar, and bus to the stadium to watch the rest of the game, before heading home to Saskatchewan on Monday. Plante said that, as they fly back to Moose Jaw, they may attempt a flyover of their hometown if they have sufficient gas.
For Snowbirds enthusiast William Gilson, the flight over the Grey Cup is expected to be an end to “a very important part” of his life and a chapter in Canadian military history. Gilson, from Calgary and a military aviation photographer, said he estimates taking 10,000 to 15,000 Snowbirds photos and expects to add several hundred more on Sunday. He also said he is skeptical the Snowbirds will return after being grounded, noting that petitions have circulated to keep the team flying. Gilson said he first saw the Snowbirds at an airport in Abbotsford, B.C., in 1972 and has followed their shows since then, including planning to shoot the flyover from a toboggan hill just southwest of the stadium.
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