Canadian Jet Doing COVID ‘Flyover Tribute’ In Fiery Crash Onto Residence, Killing One

“We live six or seven miles away from the crash and we heard a really loud boom,” a local eyewitness said of a horrific military plane crash in British Columbia. “You could see the smoke so we decided to walk toward it. The smell was really strong. You could start to smell the burning fuel.”

Over the weekend a Canadian Air Force jet crashed into a residential neighborhood in an area 220 miles northeast of Vancouver just before noon. The jet was part of Canadian Forces Snowbirds, an aerial demonstration team akin to America’s ‘Blue Angels’, and was in the midst of performing a flyover of cities as a tribute frontline coronavirus health workers and other virus responders.

The event typically features nine jets flying in tight formation with white smoke trailing, but quickly turned tragic after one aircraft veered off and spiraled down, ending in a massive boom. Capt. Jenn Casey, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Snowbirds, died in the crash while her copilot survived with serious injuries after parachuting out.

The New York Times describes of the crash that happened just after a pair of jets took off from Kamloops Airport:

The white and red jet took off alongside another and did a wide turn once in flight, according to a video posted on Twitter. Shortly after, the plane could be seen heading downward.

It appeared that two people ejected from the plane in a plume of dark smoke before the aircraft nose-dived into a house in the Brocklehurst neighborhood of Kamloops, which is about 220 miles northeast of Vancouver.

The Canadian Forces Snowbirds last month announced Operation Inspiration. The mission consisted of the squadron flying over cities across Canada in a nine-jet formation with trailing white smoke. The Snowbirds were scheduled to start in Nova Scotia and work their way west throughout the week.

Shocking video recorded by onlookers showed the plane attempted to gain altitude before entering a dramatic nosedive — all which took a mere seconds.

The two pilots were then seen ejecting already perilously close to the ground — so close that it was unclear whether the parachutes even opened. 

Here’s a video that was sent to us at @RadioNLNews from earlier this morning. #Kamloops pic.twitter.com/hc61YWscmQ

— Victor Mario Kaisar (@supermario_47) May 17, 2020

The flame-engulfed jet reportedly landed directly on a residential house, but there were no reports of injuries or deaths on the ground, with an elderly couple surviving — one had been in the basement at the moment of impact, with another in the backyard.

Debris was seen scattered across lawns and the neighborhood as firefighters responded. 

The RCAF has suffered another tragic loss of a dedicated member of the RCAF team. We are deeply saddened and grieve alongside Jenn’s family and friends. Our thoughts are also with the loved ones of Captain MacDougall. We hope for a swift recovery from his injuries. – Comd RCAF pic.twitter.com/8U41bdVqcU

— Royal Canadian Air Force (@RCAF_ARC) May 18, 2020

Local eyewitnesses in the residential area said they were shocked and didn’t initially know what had happened:

Kerri Turatus, 30, who lives in the neighborhood where the plane went down, said the aircraft hit a house, engulfing it in flames.

It “sounded like a gunshot outside my window,” Turatus said.

She saw a “big black circle ring of smoke” in the sky, she said, adding that part of the plane’s wreckage was in the street and that she could see a wing sticking out of a neighbor’s garage.

Parts of the aircraft could be seen scattered and in flames across a neighborhood block, with a parachute being found on the roof of a house. It seems a miracle that the copilot survived. 

Another eyewitness, Rose Miller, told the AP: “It looked to me like it was mostly on the road, but it just exploded. It went everywhere.” She added, “In fact, I got a big, huge piece in my backyard. The cops said it was the ejection seat.”

The tragedy brings up serious questions of safety as well as how necessary such high-risk, high-cost endeavors are as well as their frequency.

Ongoing campaigns in the United States involving major flyovers of cities by The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds as “tribute” and “inspiration” amid COVID-19 lockdowns have grown increasingly controversial given the huge expense to taxpayers, at $500,000 per flyover, according to some estimates. 

Some doctors and health workers have even joined the chorus of those saying “it’s a shameful waste of money”. 

The weekend tragedy in British Columbia presents another criticism: the unnecessary dangers both the pilots and on the ground spectators are subject to in what remains fundamentally high-risk aerial demonstrations and maneuvers.