An air show team like the Canadian Forces Snowbirds has a lot in common with a major rock band when you think about it. Possibly the most common similarity is that neither concerts or air show perforomances would ever happen without an exceptional amount of behind the scenes work done by people who rarely share the limelight of the performances they make happen. Bands have an army of "roadies" that do all the work necessary to make sure their shows go on and the Snowbirds similarly have their own team of "roadies of the sky", the maintenance technicians that do all the work it takes to make sure the team has nine CT-114 Tutor jets ready to fly for each of the over one hundred aerobatic demonstrations and fly-pasts the team will fly for this …show more content…
The crew arrive at the jets and immediately dig into doing the routine pre-flight checks required before the jets can be released to fly and tackle cleaning the jets. Possibly the most obvious example of the dedication the crew put into their work is the amount of time they spend around, on and underneath the jets making sure they're spotlessly clean. Despite the normal fluid leaks and the hundreds of mini mid-air collisions the jets incur with bugs throughout their flight you'll be hard pressed to find a dirty Snowbird jet on the ramp at a …show more content…
The over the wing debrief is when pilots point out any issues, referred to as snags, that they encountered with their jet during the show. Some snags are easy to fix. Some aren't. "Some days are shorter than others and some, are really long." said Sgt Dafour. But easy or hard, the crew step up and get to work on the snags after the brief to get ready for the next