other angle and news story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue1Qi4uG8U0

At the risk of being cynical, I find the timing of this accident a little suspicious. While the country is increasingly angry about the Government spending billions on a sole-source contract for new fighter planes, this happens and suddenly everyone is all "We need new planes!".

Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe it was intentional. Who knows?

Need slow motion for timeshift!

He is about at 100 feet, which is nothing in a fighter plane. (Wing Span: 12.30 m and it is about 3ish wingspans from the ground in the other posted video)

@Throbbin. Also Tony Clement "saving" that woman from "drowning" two days ago.

You'd think he'd have learnt his lesson after the first and second crashes, then he goes and does the exact same thing again. Stop giving this guy planes Canada.

*brief video is brief

This video has been flagged as being less than 1 minute in length - declared brief by Trancecoach.

I thought those sorts of maneuvers weren't really possible without thrust vectoring, and I don't believe F-18's have thrust vectoring (though it may have been added in an update or later models). Anyways, it's kind of a good thing he ejected while facing away from where the giant fireball was going to be a couple seconds later.

edit:

In repsonse to Throbbin: See?! This is why we need thrust vectoring in our jet planes! It's godless commie terrorists like you who don't get a hardon watching hundred million dollar war machines at airshows as god intended, like real red-blooded [insert nationality] citizens, that are the reason we're in this predicament.

This looks to be an older f-18, not the super hornet. It is hard to tell, the main difference is easy to spot normally as the old school hornet has oval intakes, where as the super hornet has rectangle ones. It is possible the aircraft become unstable when the operator was trying to bank while under speed. However, that isn't the only explanation as there could of been bad wind sheer, flame out (hard to say, right when it is going down I hear 2 pops, but that could be the rockets from the ejection seats), or some type of failure on the plane itself. It shouldn't be an albatross until the investigation is in. There is a very small window for error when flying at those speeds at that altitude. It is as close to the razors edge you get pulling [combat] maneuvers at low speed and altitude.

@GeeSussFreeK you're correct, canada's F18s are not super hornets. We've had them for almost 30 years. The super hornets went into service in 1999... more they're more recent than i thought.

Reading about several ground witnesses said they heard the same popping from the engine that I heard. "Ear" wittness testimoney isn't always reliable, and they too could mistake the popping for the ejection seats going off (if they were far enough away the desync in time could cause some confusion to the timing of events).

Here are some great high res shots

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/07/23/4739027-pilot-ejects-an-instant-before-fighterjet-crashes

Looks like a tip stall into a flat spin. I don't know how often this happens to F-18s but when doing a super-slow, super-low high-alpha maneuver like this, it's about as likely as ever. Maybe he was just a wee bit too slow, a wee bit too pitched-up and way too low. Good to know nobody was hurt.

Listen right at the 6 second mark. I don't see any flame burst out of the back end, but it sounds like a flame out. Perhaps brought on by the bank at low speed disrupting the intake just enough to cause a brief flame out then the wing tip stall and unrecoverable nose dip. F-18 is has much better handling and is able to have very high angles of attack compared with the tomcat (its closet relative). If he had engines, that looked like something he could recover from with full throttle, but a flame out would be doom. Though, it could just be sloppy pilot work and a flat out wing still, which would be a really expensive mistake.

*dead

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by kulpims.

Awarding kulpims with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.