A large grey plane flew over Salmon Arm just after noon today sparked calls to the Salmon Arm Airport.
But not as many as it did when the military transport plane did a low fly-by about three months ago.
“It came in from Kamloops did a low fly over and I got lots of phone calls with people wanting to know what was going on,” airport manager Keith Watson says.
“Today, I saw it coming in on runway four, but it didn’t come below 3,000 ft and it departed to the south.”
Watson says he was in a hangar on the phone when he heard the large transport plane and only caught a glimpse of the large aircraft.
He says the military fly under their own flight plans because the military does their own tracking.
The aircraft was reported to be a CC-177 Globemaster 3, a Canadian military transport plane that first flew over Dawson Creek, the home of the pilot and flew over the Salmon Arm home of the co-pilot before heading to Remembrance Day ceremonies in Lethbridge, Alta.
Watson says it’s more common to see the military’s large yellow Search and Rescue Cormorant helicopters over the airport.
“They fly over working their search grids, or whatever, drop their flags, then the SAR techs jump out, land, grab the flags and jump back into the plane and they leave,” he says. “The grey one doesn’t land.”
