Snowbirds Grounded as RCAF CT-114 Aircraft to be Retired

Video from the channel CDA Institute about Canadair CT-114 Tutor, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 8:23. Language: English. Video type: News.

André Deschamps, a former Royal Canadian Air Force commander, discusses on The Security Brief, the CDA Institute's programme, the retirement of the CT-114 Tutor and the pause of the Snowbirds, the aerobatic team that has flown it for some 55 years. As he explains, the squadron is not closing for good: its personnel will be reassigned, the aircraft will be stored and later sold to another country or to private buyers, or else recycled.

Deschamps attributes the decision to two factors coinciding in time. On one hand, keeping an aircraft designed in the early sixties and in service since 1963 in safe condition has become very costly. On the other, the Air Force needs qualified personnel for the new fleets it is bringing in. The planned successor is the Pilatus PC-21 from the crew training programme awarded in 2024, which covers 19 aircraft. The Snowbirds would need about 11 more, which would arrive at the end of that production run.

Deschamps estimates a pause of about five years, so the team would be reconstituted in the early part of the next decade, with the added difficulty of recovering experienced pilots. He also compares the two aircraft. The Tutor is somewhat faster and flies higher and farther. The PC-21, on the other hand, withstands more G, handles bird strikes better thanks to the propeller, and carries a modern ejection seat that can also be used on the ground. For the public, he says, the most noticeable change will be the sound of the turboprop instead of the jet's roar.