CT-114 Planes Performing Terrifying High-Speed Stunts! | Ice Pilots

Video from the channel Ice Pilots about Canadair CT-114 Tutor, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:23. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

In this excerpt from the documentary series Ice Pilots, "Buffalo" Joe McBryan, a pilot with more than 50 years of experience, flies as a passenger with the Snowbirds in a CT-114 Tutor. The flight has been organised by his son Mikey. Before take-off, Joe has to pass the flight doctor's medical check, since he will have to withstand about 5 G. He then meets his pilot, nicknamed Shaggy, and the technician who helps strap him into the ejection seat.

The cockpit cameras show the take-off, the join-up into the big diamond formation and the Condor. The spacing between aircraft shrinks from about 10 feet to just 4. The pilot explains three things: in formation, the aircraft on the left side are flown from the right-hand seat, and vice versa, so as not to have to look across the cockpit; each pilot follows the leader and not the aircraft next to them; and in the display they reach +5 and −2 G, as shown on the panel's accelerometer. In the trail manoeuvre, Joe takes the controls and follows number 4. The pilot handles the landing.

The narration recalls that the Snowbirds trace their roots to 431 Squadron Iroquois of the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War and that they perform across North America. Joe, born in 1944, says he always wanted to fly with the team and that he could not join the Air Force because he had not finished his final year of high school. He ends the flight without having used the sick bag.