Snowbirds returning to Kelowna this summer

KELOWNA – Fasten your seatbelts, it looks like the Snowbirds will be returning to Kelowna this summer.

Council are expected to authorize the iconic team of nine serving pilots and their CT 114 Tutors to perform during the 2014 Rotary Air Show, which takes place July 30 in front of Waterfront Park.

Capt. Thomas Edelson is the Squadron Public Affairs Officer and was in Kelowna the last time the Snowbirds performed in Kelowna in 2012.

“Kelowna is a great place to go in the summer,” he says. “It is a little tight and the mountains present a unique challenge because at the speeds the planes fly the horizon can come at you pretty quick.”

Edelson says the weather is one of the reasons the Snowbirds love to fly in the Okanagan Valley.

“It’s certainly one of the more beautiful spots to have a show.”

Edelson says that the details of the performance are still being finalized, but it will likely be a 35 to 40 minute show. Some of the aerobatics, he says, will be new and never before seen by the public.

“We’re still going through workup training,” he says. “We won’t have the entire show pieced together until around the end of April.”

City of Kelowna Communications Supervisor Tom Wilson says the event still requires approval from Council, the local RCMP and Transport Canada but he expects the show will go ahead as planned.

For more information on the Canadian Forces Snowbirds and the charities they support, visit this website.

To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infotelnews.ca, call (250) 718-0428 or tweet @AdamProskiw.