Friday, March 29, 2024

Canada’s newest Search and Rescue aircraft visits Comox

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The 19 Wing Comox Canadian Forces Base got a glimpse of a future addition to their fleet on Monday. An Airbus C295W belonging to the Brazilian Air Force stopped by for a demonstration of the latest in Search and Rescue technology.

Canada has ordered 16 such planes for delivery in 2020. Comox will receive five of them.

“We’ve been flying the [CC-115] Buffalo for 50 years this year so it’s nice to see something new on the ramp.” Lieutenant Colonel Bryn Elliott told CHEK News.

New Planes, New Technology

The C295W will have a much larger range than existing aircraft as well as state-of-the-art cameras and radar.

“We’ll have infrared, we’ll have a very sophisticated radar, we’ll have sophisticated cameras on board,” said Elliott. “Right now we’re trusting our eyes to do the searching, this one will have both our eyes as well as technology behind us.”

Canada’s contract with Airbus currently amounts to $2.3 billion but a maintenance option could increase that to $4.3 billion.

Airbus is a French company, and the C295W aircraft are made in Spain. However, both the plane’s engines and its nose camera are made in Canada.

A new training centre with a Canadian-made flight simulator will also open at 19 Wing Comox in 2019.

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Alistair Ogden
Former staff writer at Victoria Buzz.

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