Vancouver Island-born Snowbirds pilot Capt. Logan Reid is saying goodbye to the iconic aerobatics team after three years but he is going out in style.
This week, the Canadian Forces Snowbirds announced their annual rotation of pilots for the team - something that happens regularly each year. For the upcoming season, the team is rotating two pilots - Reid (Snowbird 8) and Capt. Arpit Mahajan (Snowbird 3).
In a post to social media, the team jokingly posted a photo on the transition, noting, “it’s a tough transition and sometimes you have to drag (the pilots) out of the cockpit” with of photo of Reid being pulled by a co-worker.
Reid was born in Duncan but grew up in Victoria, where he earned his private pilot’s licence. When he first joined the team, he told Black Press press he recalls some of his first memories of aviation was the Comox Air Show.
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“My dad and I were in Duncan and he drove me up in 1994…I remember waiting for hours in the lineup to get in and that was my first memory. I got to meet the Snowbirds, I got to see the jets flying overhead. So the Comox Air Show is near and dear to my heart – we went up every other year we could and then when we moved to Victoria, I found myself taking the ferry more often to the Abbotsford Air Show.”
Reid joined the military in 2008 and graduated from the Royal Military College in Kingston in 2012. He was assigned as a flight instructor and a few years later applied for the Snowbirds team.
While Mahajan is not from Vancouver Island, he is another B.C. pilot. Born in Chandigarh, India, he moved to Canada when he was seven years old. He began flying shortly after high school near his home in Delta at the Boundary Bay Airport and joined the forces in 2016.
The 2023 Snowbirds season has officially started, with the schedule set to be announced in the new year.
photos@comoxvalleyrecord.com
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