File photo of Tanker 11 at Libby Army Airfield, AZ, June 15, 2011. Photo by Ned Harris

UPDATED at 3:40 p.m. MT, June 4, 2012

Air tankers grounded

The day after the crash of Air Tanker 11 on Sunday which killed two pilots, all air tankers are grounded, we were told by Jennifer Jones of the U.S. Forest Service at Boise. Neptune Aviation, the company that operated Tanker 11, took the initiative to ground their remaining fleet of eight air tankers. Most likely the company took the step in order to help their crews and staff cope with their loss, but we are waiting for a return call from Neptune to confirm the exact reason.

In addition, following the emergency landing in which one of the three landing gears did not deploy on Minden Air Corp Tanker 55 on Sunday, the federal government is conducting an inspection on Minden’s other air tanker, Tanker 48, making it unavailable.

The result, at least for today, is the entire fleet of nine large air tankers is not available.

As these 50-plus year old aircraft age even more, the U.S. Forest Service’s commitment to putting all of their eggs in one or two baskets makes it more likely that total or near-total grounding of the air tanker fleet can occur again after a crash or when a defect is discovered. Eight of the remaining air tankers are Korean war vintage P2Vs, and one is a BAe-146 delivered in 1986. Eight are operated by Neptune, and Minden has one left.

More details about the crash

The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting a few more details about the crash of Tanker 11. Here is an excerpt:

…An eyewitness told KUTV that moments before the plane crashed, it was flying very low, clipping the tops of trees.

Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower said Monday afternoon that it appeared that the right wing tip hit the ground, causing the plane to go into a cartwheel. The plane was destroyed, the debris spread across a 500-to-600 foot area.

“You could see it was a very violent crash,” Gower said.

The cause of the crash remained under investigation Monday and National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the way to the remote and rugged crash site Monday afternoon.

More aerial resources becoming available?

There is a rumor that Tanker 911, a DC-10 operated by 10 Tanker Air Carrier is being brought on contract, but at 3:36 p.m. MT, June 4, we talked with Rick Hatton, the President of the Company, and he has not been notified of this development. He said he also heard the rumor, and was hoping that my call was, instead of me, a contracting officer with the USFS.  The DC-10 carries 11,600 gallons of retardant, five times more than a P2V and four times more than a BAe-146.

The US Forest Service has shown no interest recently in awarding exclusive use contracts to the Very Large Air Tankers (VLAT) such as the DC-10, 747, or Martin Mars, and has only offered Call When Needed contracts. It is difficult or impossible to maintain any large aircraft and a very specialized crew when there is no assurance that it will be used. The USFS is missing the boat if they do not utilize these assets, period, but especially under these conditions.

The air tanker report that the U.S. Forest Service commissioned but refuses to release even after a Freedom on Information Act Request, was not released in May by the RAND Corporation as promised. RAND told Wildfire Today in March that they had no problem releasing the report to the public even though the USFS said  “…the report is proprietary and confidential RAND business information and must be withheld in entirety under FOIA Exemption 4″. The USFS refusal letter went on to say: “The data, analysis, and conclusion in this report are not accurate or complete.” The USFS said they wanted “to protect against public confusion that might result from premature disclosure.”

Lisa Sodders of RAND told Wildfire Today on Monday that the report is still undergoing peer review “both internally and externally”, and explained that some of the reviews are taking longer than anticipated. RAND expects to release the report “in the coming weeks”, Ms. Sodders said.

The external reviews are probably the ones that are holding up the process, I’m thinking.

The USFS Forest Service paid RAND $840,000 for the study. This was the fifth study on air tankers since 1996. A sixth one is underway now, commissioned, again, by the U.S. Forest Service, but paid for, again, by the U.S. taxpayers.

More information about:

• The history air tanker studies
• Analysis paralysis

Here is the description that the Southwest Area Type 1 Incident Management Team posted with the video on May 30, which is titled Tanker 40-Bae-146 Retardant Drop Whitewater-Baldy Fire:

Air Tanker puts down a line of fire retardant on Whitewater-Baldy Fire off of the 141 road. This drop was to help pretreat the north side of the road so fire crews could do their burn out on the south side of the road.

It’s not a great shot of the air tanker, but if you look carefully you can see two engines hanging below the right wing, which indicates that it IS the BAe-146 jet-powered Tanker 40.

I noticed that the lead plane was louder than the air tanker, which is very unusual — much less noisy than tankers with huge radial piston engines. BAe-146s are known for their relatively quiet operation, which enables the airliner to fly into some noise-restricted airports when others can’t.

Another thing I noticed was that the pilots were extremely accurate with their drop, placing the retardant right on the edge of the road, probably exactly where the firefighters wanted it.

Here is a bonus video from the Whitewater-Baldy fire, also posted by the Southwest Area Type 1 Incident Management Team. It was shot in the same general area, on the northeast side of the fire along Forest Road 141, May 28, 2012.