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Plane crash in Lethbridge days after Dawson Creek airshow

Friday, July 23, 2010

A CF-18 that performed at the Dawson Creek air show on Wednesday has crashed in Lethbridge.

During a practice session, the pilot was performing a low altitude pass, when the plane suddenly crashed. The pilot was able to eject from the plane and is now in hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

The CF-18 was preparing for the Alberta International air show which was scheduled to start on Saturday.

The same plane and pilot left Dawson Creek on Thursday after performing Wednesday night in that community without incident

I saw some pictures. Link.

Its scary how close to the ground the pilot ejected.

Good thing the pilot manage to escape. I could never imagine something like this happening with a plane in good condition!

I heard on the news this morning that the pilot escaped with minor injuries. I'm surprised given how low he ejected.

Apparently the flight computer took a dump, the (C)F-18's need the computer to work properly in order to stay airborne, otherwise they are not flyable (The system is called fly-by-wire)... In fact just about every fighter developed in the last 30 years or so is that way. In order to make the plane faster and more manouverable they have to alter the body and wing shapes, but this makes the plane very unstable at low speeds. The computers are constantly adjusting things to stay airborne.

Anyway, with that said, most of these planes in the Canadian military are 20+ years old. We just spent 16 billion dollars on some F-35's, though .