Canadian Air Force acrobatic patrol plane crashed in British Columbia on Sunday, resulting in one death and serious injury during an operation to cheer up Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic , according to the Canadian military. “With a heavy heart, we are announcing that a member of the CF Snowbirds team (Canadian Forces, editor’s note) died and another was injured “, tweeted the Canadian patrol, also known as the “Snowbirds,” on Sunday.
The injured crew member suffered serious injuries but his life is not in danger, the military said.
Earlier in the afternoon, the Royal Canadian Air Force reported that a patrol aircraft had crashed near Kamloops, in the province of British Columbia (west), about 450 kilometers east of is from Vancouver.
The plane crashed shortly after takeoff in the late morning from Kamloops Airport, along with another aircraft. He landed on the front facade of a house. Photos published in the afternoon by the local weekly Kamloops This Week show debris from the burning appliance near the house, which has partially caught fire.
A video, taken by a witness and disseminated in particular on the website of the Quebec newspaper The Press, shows the two planes at the time of takeoff. One of them quickly gained altitude before making a circle and crashing into an explosion, after at least one member of the crew had succeeded in ejecting in extremis before the crash according to images.
“There was no noise, it was strange, then the plane went into a spin and fell from the sky. Just boom, straight to the ground, then a cloud of black smoke ”, Radio Canada Annette Schonewille said on public radio.
Another witness, Nolyn Macleod, said on public radio that she saw the plane pass three meters above its roof. “We saw the pilot eject at a height corresponding to two floors perhaps, and then the unmanned plane fell right between my house and that of my neighbor”, he said. “It was complete chaos. People were screaming and crying. We thought we were bombed or something. This tells you how intense it was. ”
The two planes were scheduled to fly over British Columbia on Sunday as part of a tour dubbed “Operation Inspiration,” launched earlier this month to honor Canadians’ efforts in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Canadian patrol, made up of nine planes leaving in their wake a trail of white smoke, had started their tour of Nova Scotia with the objective of flying over the main cities of the country, at low altitude and from east to west.
Last October, a Snowbirds jet plane had already crashed in an uninhabited area shortly before an air show in Atlanta (United States). The pilot managed to eject.
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