It’s going to be a tight schedule but that doesn’t phase the Fraser Blues.

The close formation flying team – comprised of a bunch of ex-military fighter pilots – knows a thing or two about precision timing.

The Langley airport-based flyers are scheduled to soar over Cloverdale Nov. 11, in between flypasts over Aldergrove, Fort Langley, Langley and Port Kells.

At eight minutes past 11 a.m. the Fraser Blues will rumble overhead, flying six classic L17 Navions, North American-made aircraft used by U.S. forces during the Korean War.

The Fraser Blues and their single-engine planes are a familiar presence at air shows across B.C. and beyond, performing close-formation flying manoeuvres like head-ons, bomb blasts and split ups.

This will be the team’s 11th Remembrance Day flypast.

“We love to do it,” says lead pilot George Miller, a retired Canadian Air Force colonel and former leader of the Canadian Snowbirds.

“This is our major hobby and it is a great honour to remember the veterans who have paid the price.”

Remembrance Day isn’t just another flight for Miller, who served for three years in Egypt, where he was responsible for the Remembrance Day ceremonies at El Al Amein.

He also worked with the Canadian War Graves Commission, a post that sent him to some truly remote burial sites where Canadians have been laid to rest.

He remembers being escorted by Egyptian and Libyan forces to see a grave site straddling the border that contained the graves of two fallen Canadian airmen.

The Egyptians and Libyans had done a wonderful job of tending the graves, he said. “It’s a pretty lonely place to be buried,” said Miller, who now manages the Langley Airport and will be flying with team member and son Guy Miller of Abbotsford.

The Fraser Blues isn’t the only formation flying team headed for the skies over Cloverdale during Wednesday’s ceremony. Consider the task at hand for Boundary Bay’s Cenotaph Flyover team.

In the span of an hour, they’ll be flying four, very loud, vintage Harvard planes in formation over a Baker’s dozen of Remembrance Day services in the Lower Mainland, including Cloverdale’s, on Nov. 11.

“It’s difficult to be in 13 places, all at 11 o’clock,” says lead pilot Mike Langford, who’s been performing flypasts with his group for 20 years now.

Fortunately, he says, the pilots are in close radio contact with air traffic controllers during the flight, ensuring different formation flying teams don’t collide in the busy Metro Vancouver skies on Remembrance Day.

“We’re able to keep out of each other’s way.”

The Cenotaph Flyover’s flightpath typically takes them over services from Bowen Island and the North Shore to downtown Vancouver and south to Ladner, Whalley, and Cloverdale, where on Wednesday they’ll soar over the Cenotaph at Surrey Museum Plaza at 10 minutes to 11 a.m. – 20 minutes before westbound Fraser Blues are planning their flyover here. “Our planes are louder,” he says.

Langford, a mechanical engineer, says the other three pilots on his team come from commercial pilot backgrounds.

“We all do different things and we come together for this one event,” says Langford, who grew up listening to the sound of Harvard planes, 650-hp aircraft used as training aircraft in Vancouver during the Second World War, explaining why he was drawn to performing flypasts.

“I love planes greatly. That’s basically it.”

Everyone knows someone who has, or is, serving in the armed forces, giving Remembrance Day universal appeal, he added.