New RCAF plane completes 1st operational parachute rescue deep in B.C. mountains

Jon Azpiri · CBC News

· Posted: May 25, 2025 4:47 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 hours ago

Members of the Royal Canadian Air Force are celebrating the palmy rescue of a aviator who crashed heavy successful the mountains northbound of Prince George, B.C.

The ngo progressive Canada's newest fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft. The CC-295 Kingfisher carried retired its archetypal operational parachute leap connected Wednesday aft lone 3 weeks connected the job.

The aerial unit says the Kingfisher, which is based retired of Canadian Forces Base Comox on Vancouver Island, is specifically designed for search-and-rescue operations, and comes equipped with sensors that let crews to find radical oregon objects from much than 40 kilometres away, adjacent successful low-light conditions.

"The modernization connected this level is nighttime and time compared to what we utilized to alert previously," said Capt. Greg Harris, who piloted the Kingfisher during the mission.

The aircraft officially went into cognition connected May 1, Harris said, and completed its first operational leap Wednesday to assistance prevention a civilian aviator who had crashed adjacent Mount Kinney. 

Harris said the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre successful Victoria notified them astatine astir 1:30 p.m. of a spot beacon being activated by a single-passenger airplane, indicating a crash.

An RCMP chopper reached the clang site, approximately 130 kilometres northeast of Prince George, and recovered the injured pilot.

Search-and-rescue technicians past parachuted retired of the Kingfisher, astir 10 kilometres southbound of wherever the level crashed, and established a impermanent attraction site.

RCMP past took the injured aviator to the SAR technicians. They stabilized the patient, who was past picked up by a CH-149 Cormorant chopper and flown to Prince George for treatment.

'Ended up being beauteous challenging'

Harris credited his colleagues for handling challenging terrain and atrocious weather. 

"You never cognize what you're going to get, and it's ne'er simple," he said. "There's ever variables that travel up that you weren't reasoning were going to come up. So it ended up being beauteous challenging."

Master Cpl. Alain Goguen was among the SAR technicians who parachuted retired of the plane carrying aesculapian instrumentality and other gear.

Goguen said the exertion connected the Kingfisher helped them measure wherever they were going to land, redeeming them precious minutes successful a ngo wherever clip was of the essence.

Harris said with stormy weather looming, they were minutes distant from not being capable to have the SAR technicians jump, and the injured aviator would person had to hold "a important time."

He said helium and his colleagues were thrilled to play a relation successful getting the aviator to safety, moving intimately with RCMP and the unit of the CH-149 Cormorant. He added that the mission allowed them to trial their caller craft successful a real-life situation.

"A batch of clip these situations wherever airplanes crashed, the result is often not a bully one, truthful the information that the first operational leap of the Kingfisher was truthful palmy and the result was truthful positive, it led to a pretty jubilant basal here," Harris said.

Goguen described the rescue successful much straightforward terms. 

"That's what we trained for, truthful that's what we did. And things worked out."

LISTEN | Harris and Goguen picture their mission: