The Royal Canadian Air Force has grounded the Snowbirds aerobatic team after one of the aircraft suffered a hard landing last week in northern British Columbia.
Maj. Gen. Iain Huddleston, commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, ordered a pause in all flights of the team’s CT-114 Tutor aircraft Wednesday after consulting with flight safety experts and the Department of National Defence’s deputy assistant minister of materiel , according to an Air Force statement.
No one was injured in the Aug. 2 accident in Fort St. John, British Columbia, but the plane was damaged when the pilot made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff.
While the incident is still under investigation, the Air Force says it will conduct a separate “extensive risk analysis” of the Tutor jets with a view to returning them safely to the air.
“The RCAF airworthiness system will assess whether the accident and its causes pose a risk to continued flight operations and, if so, what mitigation measures can be implemented to reduce those risks,” the statement said.
The nearly 60-year-old aircraft is expected to be used by the Snowbirds until at least 2030.
The planes were grounded as recently as late June while the Air Force investigated a problem with the device that sets the time for emergency ejection of the plane’s parachute.
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