With the 2020-2021 Southern Hemisphere wildfire season coming to a close Coulson Aviation firefighting aircraft are being brought back to North America.

Seven of their aircraft that were in Australia are already back at their home bases. Under contract in Victoria, Western Australia, and New South Wales were two C-130s, a 737 FIRELINER, three Sikorsky S61 helitankers, and a Sikorsky S76 aerial supervision platform. One of the C-130’s purchased from the Norwegian military that just finished its conversion into Tanker 132, made its firefighting debut in Western Australia.

As part of the demobilization of the four Coulson Chinooks from Chile, the helitankers were flown to a port and the blades removed before the helicopter was loaded into a cargo ship. The blades were packed into one of the helitankers and secured for the trip home. The photos above and below show some of the work involved behind the scenes with N49 CU.

Coulson’s six aircraft on contract in Chile are on their way back to North America now. That includes four CH47D Chinooks, one UH60 Blackhawk, and a Citation 550. The aircraft worked out of Talca, Concepción, and Los Angeles.

Coulson partnered with the Chilean company PESCO through separate contracts with plantation companies ARAUCO and CMPC. They had four CH47D Chinook helitankers, a UH60 Blackhawk, and a Citation 550 working on firefighting contracts in Chile.

Foster Coulson, Coulson Group President & COO, said an integrated multi-national team operated during the 2020-2021 Chile summer with more than 80 Coulson team members including pilots, flight engineers, maintenance, and management staff.

The Citation was used for gathering intelligence about the fires.

In 2019 Britt Coulson, Vice President of Coulson Aviation, told Fire Aviation they planned to acquire and convert for firefighting approximately 10 UH60 Blackhawks and 10 CH47D Chinooks. That same year the company purchased five C-130H’s from Norway.

Coulson said N43CU, seen below, has just completed an extensive heavy maintenance overhaul and complete airframe conversion into a Helitanker with their RADS-L Internal Tanking system capable of carrying up to 3,000 gallons. On April 7 it was in Port Alberni, BC and getting ready for its first ferry into the USA for a new coat of paint. This will be the fifth CH47D in Coulson’s fleet.