Warbird Information Exchange

Bird in Hand? The Snowbird Battle

Feb 14, 2007
By Jerome Greer Chandler/Overhaul & Maintenance

There's a bit of a battle brewing in Canada right now, a battle about the future shape of the Snowbirds, the country's crack aerobatic team. At issue: should the Snowbirds dump their decades-old Canadair CT-114 Tutors and replace them with newer aircraft, perhaps British Aerospace Hawk 115s?

Is a Snowbird in hand, no matter how venerable, better than a more capable (and that's part of the debate) machine in the bush? It's no minor matter to Canadians, who see the Canadian-built Tutors as nothing short of a national symbol.

"The Tutor really is an iconic aircraft for Canadians," said Capt. Jim Hutcheson, a spokesperson for Canadian Forces (formerly the Royal Canadian Air Force). Hutcheson, who used to fly the CT-114, said the straight-wing aircraft is "instantly recognizable in Canada, and around the world."

Recognizable, but relatively aged. "We brought the airplane (into the inventory) in 1964," said Major Denis Lavoie, the deputy weapons systems manager for the Canadian Forces Tutor fleet. He said the average age of the 20 airplanes in the 431 Air Demonstration Squadron (the Snowbirds' official designation) is 10,000 hours.

Because Canadian Forces once flew 190 CT-114s, Lavoie said, "We have lots of spare parts in bins." Still, there are instances where technicians have to innovate to keep Tutors flying. "Obvi- ously, we have to do modifications for some obsolescence issues," he said.

Specific relays are a classic example. They aren't manufactured anymore. "So, we change a relay with another part number, and do a slight modification." The Snowbirds complete this in conjunction with the team's design support network, in this instance with L-3 Communications, which provides avionics and airframe support.

Orenda Aerospace supports the Tutor's venerable J-85 powerplants.

With a fleet of 42-year old, high-time aircraft -- aircraft subject to airframe-stressing g-loads -- the case could be made for replacement aircraft. After all, the United States Air Force flies F-16s, the United States Navy employs F/A-18s, and the Royal Air Force flies the Hawk 1/1a.

Calls that the Canadians get with the times elicit this response from Capt. Hutcheson: "Quite frankly, the Snow- birds and the Tutors are working fine as they are right now. So there's not an urgent requirement to replace them immediately."

Indeed, the Department of National Defence (DND) has not even put out a formal Request for Proposal.

Still, at least two entities already are jockeying for position, betting DND will do just that. There's an alliance of Venga Aerospace Systems and ARINC on one side, and Bombardier on the other. Both propose to replace the Tutor.

While agreeing with Hutcheson that, "The Tutors are doing great," Chris MacIntire, ARINC's Engineering Services senior director of training programs, focuses not just on the fact the CT-114s are aging, but he also is concerned about the maintenance costs associated with keeping them fit to fly.

"We think it's something between C$14 million and C$15 million dollars per year," he said. "It's a pretty expensive per-hour aircraft."

The Proposals

Venga/ARINC propose to fix a situation the Canadian Forces have yet to deem critical by leasing 18 low-time (approximately 1,000 hours each) Swiss Air Force Hawks to the Canadians for an undisclosed amount of money. Along with the lease would come a power-by-the-hour maintenance agreement under which ARINC personnel maintain the airplanes. The firm proposes to pull "all levels of maintenance," said MacIntire, "from A checks on a periodic basis, all the way to depot-level overhaul." And they would do it with retired Canadian Forces folks, at 15 Wing, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. That's the home of the Snowbirds.

The savings? ARINC projected C$60 million over 20 years. MacIntire arrived at the figure by factoring in the cost of fuel and the price of personnel. He said the Tutor burns about 4.l pounds of petrol per nautical mile; the Hawk a more miserly 2.7 pounds.

Then there are maintenance support personnel. MacIntire contends, "Canadian Forces could reduce the total number of maintenance folks by about 25." Considering that MacIntire says it takes some 50 people to maintain the Tutors right now, "that [equates to] a $1.5 million ... reduction in the cost of support personnel each year." Venga/ ARINC are working on the premise that it costs about C$60,000 per maintainer.

He calls cost-savings projections "conservative."

Bombardier is less explicit in outlining savings issuing from its proposals. We say "proposals" because the Canadian aerospace manufacturer has a multi-tiered approach to keeping the Snowbirds soaring.

Bombardier also offers the option of replacing Tutors with Hawk 115s and then performing maintenance on the airplanes. "We know a lot about the Snowbirds," said Bill Ryan, Bombardier's chief of military aviation training. Six ex-Snowbird pilots work for Bombardier at the NATO Flight Training Center (NFTC) at Moose Jaw, where Bombardier currently maintains the Canadian Forces fleet of Hawk trainers.

That's why Ryan said there are savings to be had. "With the synergies that we already have with the NFTC program, we could reduce the number of people required to do the current maintenance. We already have the maintenance set up here [at Moose Jaw] and all of the infrastructure. We could free up bodies so that they could be used somewhere else."

Ryan said Bombardier could assume Snowbird maintenance with 35 people or so, which would cut the aerobatic team's maintenance cadre significantly. Bombardier, like Venga/ARINC, proposes to perform the maintenance using former Snowbird technicians.

Like Venga/ARINC, like the Canadian Forces, Ryan is quick to sing the praises of the Tutor. "It's a wonderful aircraft," he said. He has reason to know. He used to be a Snowbird pilot.

Should the Department of National Defence decide not to shelve the venerable CT-114, Bombardier asserts it's ready to a) take over current Tutor upkeep, or b) assume CT-114 maintenance duties and implement a series of modifications. Avionics would get a major makeover: new radios, new GPS.

One of the more immediate needs is for a new ejection seat. Hutcheson said if the DND opts to retain the Tutor, "We would also be looking to make changes to the escape system ... looking at an ejection seat that performs better than the one in there now."

If DND pursues the sustainment route, the airframe also could be tweaked to juice up the performance. Right now, a pair of external oil tanks generate smoke for the CT-114's public performances. Internalizing them could render the aircraft a bit aerodynamically cleaner.

Such a Snowbird Sustainment Initiative could keep Canada's straight-wing symbol flying until 2020. While neither Hutcheson nor Bombardier provided estimates as to how much such an initiative would cost, the captain did reiterate, "There is no urgent operational or maintenance reason to replace the Tutor."

The Show Must Go On

There are a couple of factors weighing against replacement -- one geographic, the other geopolitical.

Among the world's elite acrobatic teams, the Snowbird's show, asserted Hutcheson, is "unique." That's because it's close up and personal, with a nine-ship formation flying at relatively low speeds "and within a very tight radius of the crowd," said the Canadian Forces spokesman. Given its straight wing, he said the subsonic Tutor is "ideal" for the Snowbird's signature show.

Straight-wing maneuverability and good slow-speed-handling permit the Snowbirds to put on their up-close-and-personal exhibitions. "You certainly could not fly the same show using an F-16 or an F/A-18," said Hutcheson. "Too much speed and not enough maneuverability will take you outside of the range in which you want to conduct the show."

The Hawks come close to fitting the bill, but they still aren't Tutors. "[They're] not as slow as the Tutors," conceded former Snowbird pilot Bill Ryan, "Turnaround would be a little bit wider."

Still, should the Hawks win, he said there would be no wholesale scrapping of the Snowbird's repertoire. "Most of the [maneuvers] the Tutor starts off with are at 300 knots for pull-ups. And that is well within the range of the Hawk. ... You could still have a Snowbird-type show in front of the crowd, which is their signature." Ryan noted that the Hawk 115 could employ combat maneuvering flaps to slow things down when needed. But it's not just the view of the crowd that will dictate what kind of airplane the Snow- birds fly. It's the way Canadians as a whole view the team in the context of a far wider arena: the war on terror.

Canadian Forces are deployed in Afghanistan, and they're taking casualties. There's a debate afoot "that Canadian soldiers are under-equipped," said Hirsh Kwinter, president of Venga Aerospace Systems. "It would not make political sense to start spending money on an aerobatic team when you have soldiers in harm's way."

Interestingly, that's precisely one of the reasons he believes the Venga/ ARINC proposal stands a chance. Because Venga proposes to lease the aircraft to Canadian Forces, it could take some pressure off those charged with making a decision. "If [DND] had to go out in the market and purchase these aircraft, they'd have to go through the House of Commons and the Finance Minister to allocate funds," said Kwinter. A lease might stand a better chance of success than an outright sale.

"Canadian Forces are in the process of buying a bunch of new aircraft," C-17s, C-130Js and Chinook helicopters, said MacIntire. "These are things they really need to do their mission in Afghanistan."

The Outcome

No one O&M interviewed for this story would disclose proposed contract numbers. But it's safe to say whoever wins, assuming the Department of National Defence issues an RFP, the deal won't rank among the top aerospace MRO or aerospace contracts ever consummated.

Still, there's more than the mere prestige of outfitting and maintaining one of Canada's seminal symbols that's at stake here. There's also a bit of a David and Goliath element to the competition as far as Venga is concerned. "Let's face it," said Kwinter, "[We're] a small company."

Small, perhaps, but critical. Absent the Venga alliance, he believes there would be scant chance DND would entertain an ARINC overture. "Venga is a Canadian public company," said Kwinter. "We are the lead on this [proposed] contract." At stake for ARINC perhaps is a larger Canadian presence. "I think they'll establish a larger footprint in Canada if and when we're awarded this contract," said the president of Venga Aerospace Systems.

As for Bombardier, no stranger to Canadian Forces, its bid to replace the Snowbird's Tutors with Hawks could generate money to "bring in new aircraft to upgrade the NATO Flight Training Center." That, in turn, could produce "follow-on benefits," asserted Bill Ryan, which perhaps could put Canada "in a very good light to get some JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) contracts."

Ryan conceded he's offering up an awful lot of "what ifs."

Whether those what ifs eventuate could become clearer soon. There's a consensus that the future shape of the Snowbirds should be apparent by mid-2007, if not sooner.