Canadian Air Force Jet Crashes While Saluting Coronavirus Front Line Workers [Watch]

The two elderly occupants of a house in the city of Kamloops in British Columbia, Canada escaped death when a Canadair CT-114 Tutor jet trainer of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) "Snowbirds" air demonstration team crashed into their yard late Sunday morning. Their house was burned to the ground, however.

The pilot and crew member of the Tutor ejected before the aircraft slammed into the ground only a few seconds after takeoff. Video posted to Twitter show two Tutors in a side-by-side take-off when the machine on the left suddenly veers wildly upwards and to the left after leaving the ground.

The Tutor then streaks earthwards. Two puffs of smoke shoot from the plane -- the pilot and crewman ejecting -- before it explodes as it hits the ground. The video lasted about one minute from take-off to airplane crash.

The doomed Tutor and other planes belonging to the Snowbirds, which is the air demonstration team of the Canadian Armed Forces, were in Kamloops as part of Operation Inspiration, a cross-Canada tour by the Snowbirds paying tribute to frontline and essential workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Snowbirds had performed over Kamloops Saturday and were due to travel to Kelowna, a city 100 miles southeast of Kamloops, for fly pasts here and in neighboring cities. The crashed plane was headed to Comox, a Canadian Forces Base on Vancouver Island 200 miles to the west when the accident occurred.

The crash is the second for the Snowbirds -- officially 431 (Air Demonstration) Squadron -- in less than a year. A Tutor crashed in October 2019 during a warm-up flight for the Atlanta Air Show. The pilot ejected safely.

The Snowbirds were organized in 1972. Today, the squadron flies nine CT-114 Tutor jet trainers in their aerial acrobatic displays but also bring along two aircraft as spares. The squadron now consists of some 85 officers and men, including pilots, technicians, maintenance officers, logistics personnel and support staff. The squadron operated 22 Tutors before the Kamloops incident.

The Tutor was the RCAF's primary jet trainer from the 1960s up until 2000 when it was retired. It was replaced by the BAE Systems CT-155 Hawk and the Beechcraft T-6 Texan II, called the CT-156 Harvard II in RCAF service.

Before Sunday's crash at Kamloops, seven pilots and one passenger have died in crashes involving Snowbirds' Tutors.