Last year, when I went to the Abbotsford Air Show, the Snowbirds were displaying with eight jets instead of nine.  There had been an issue with one of the crew and they were completing the season down a jet.  When I headed to Comox this year for the show, I was hoping to get a full display from the Snowbirds.  That was not going to be the case.  On arrival, my friend Mark advised me that one of the pilots had injured an arm in a non-aviation related accident.  Oh well, I thought.

Then, when they started up for the display, one of the jets wouldn’t play ball.  I thought they might run to a spare jet but, no, we were down another jet.  This meant we would only have seven jets for the display.  Surprisingly, this didn’t cause as many issues in my shots as I thought it might.  The four ship cross was gone which was disappointing but, when shooting tightly on the formations, things actually seemed to look okay.  In fact, sometimes it stopped me having to worry about getting the whole formation in shot since they had “cropped” for me.

It was a pretty good display and I enjoyed watching it.  Here is a selection of shots from the day.