The Snowbirds are back in Canada and getting ready for a truncated 2020 show season that will include a return visit to AirVenture in Oshkosh. The team was grounded for more than a month after a pre-emptive ejection by Snowbird 5 Capt. Kevin Domron-Grenier in Atlanta on Oct. 13. The grounding was lifted in November but the idle time cut into the team’s training schedule and the start of the show season has been pushed to early June at the earliest. The first two shows, planned for Selfridge AFB in Michigan June 6-7 and North Bay, Ontario June 10 are listed as tentative, depending on the training schedule. Most of the following shows will be in Canada and include most of the major air shows across the country.
The RCAF has announced that Capt. Dan Deluce is the CF-18 demonstration pilot for the 2020 season. The Hornet show will be confined to Canada for the full season and will be at many of the shows scheduled for the Snowbirds. Deluce is a former medevac pilot who joined the RCAF in 2010 and was chosen to fly the CF-18. He became an instructor on the Hornet and was deployed to Romania as part of Operation Reassurance.