Organizers of what’s being billed as the Spirit Flight are hoping many Central Okanagan residents will be gazing skyward Sunday afternoon.
The flyover, which will include about 20 aircraft, was planned to help put smiles on people’s faces amid the ongoing pandemic and related restrictions.
“People have been pretty sad, down in the dumps that kind of thing,” said organizer and pilot Trevor Jones. “I just wanted to lift people’s spirits up again and try to bring families and people closer together, get people outside for an hour.”
The flyover will involve all kinds of aircraft, including helicopters, float planes and according to Jones, the world’s fastest single engine non-military high-performance aircraft.
“We’ve got four groups of of categories for aircraft, so it will be basically high-performance all the way to float planes,” he told Global News. “To end the procession, we’re going to have float planes downtown Kelowna. It’ll be pretty cool. I’m pretty excited.”
Jones said there will be many vantage points to see the planes in action.
“We’re going to try and fly close to the shoreline. It’ll be over the lake for sure.” he said. “I think the best place for people to go would be downtown waterfront, anywhere from Mission to Knox Mountain…and even the west side waterfront, you’ll be able to see us clearly for sure.”
Jones organized a similar type of fly-over at this time last year.
That one honoured Snowbirds Captain Jenn Casey, who was tragically killed in Kamloops just over a year ago.
Sunday’s flyover will begin at noon with planes taking off from the Kelowna airport.
The event is expected to last about an hour and a half.
Jones will be livestreaming the flyover from his cockpit on Instagram.
His Instagram handle is m5_trev.