WINNIPEG - Fighter pilots Capt. Forrest Rock and Lieut.-Col. Patrice Laroche, of 3 Wing Bagotville and Capt. Dan Walters and Maj. Chris Hamilton of 4 Wing Cold Lake, are this year's official escort pilots for Santa Claus while he visits Canada during his Christmas Eve trip around the world.
Canadian fighter pilots will gather the first pictures of Santa
and his sleigh as he arrives over the continent using special
NORAD SantaCams mounted on their aircraft.
The Canadian Air Defence Sector Operations Centre at 22 Wing
North Bay alerts NORAD when Santa is entering Canadian
airspace. Two CF-18 Hornet fighter jets from 3 Wing meet Santa
as he enters Canadian air space off the coast of Newfoundland
and Labrador.
As Santa flies across North America from east to west, two
CF-18 Hornets from 4 Wing escort him out of Canadian airspace
to continue his Yuletide trip.
Millions of  children will be able to follow his progress by viewing digital photographs and technical information compiled by NORAD on their Internet site: www.noradsanta.org . Santa has communicated to NORAD that he intends to begin his journey at 4 am Dec. 24. At that time, NORAD's tracking data will be translated into streaming audio and video updates and posted to the web site's radar map.
All of this information will be available in English, French,
German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.
Children have been visiting the website since its launch in 1998 to view information about Santa that NORAD experts have collected over the years such as Santa's favourite snacks and how NORAD's satellites detect Rudolph's red nose. Last year, the website received 912 million "hits" from 204 countries.
Children can also receive updates on Santa's Christmas Eve
journey, by calling the traditional "NORAD Tracks Santa"
telephone hotline at 1-877-HI NORAD
The NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center, occupied by 550
volunteers on Christmas Eve, answered nearly 55,000 phone calls
and nearly 98,240 e-mails.
