DC-10 Tanker 911, July 2, 2012 on the Shingle fire in Utah. Photo by Scott G. Winterton (Click to see a larger version.)
The DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker, Tanker 911, was released June 16 from their Call When Needed assignment by the U.S. Forest Service and sent home, told they were no longer needed. Here are some photos of the aircraft in action over the last couple of weeks on the Shingle Fire in Utah and the Robbers Fire in California. Click on the photos to see larger versions.
Between July 9 and 16 Tanker 911 flew 11 sorties and dropped approximately 127,600 gallons of retardant on the following fires in Oregon, California, and Idaho: Sites, Long Draw, Stout, Miller Homestead, Robbers, and Calf.
Earlier we reported that the DC-10 dropped 373,600 gallons on 33 sorties from June 12 through June 21. If all of those 373,600 gallons had been delivered by a P2V it would have taken about 192 round trips to the fires.
HERE is a link to a video news report about the air tanker from a TV station in Sacramento.
DC-10 Tanker 911, July 2, 2012 on the Shingle fire in Utah. Photo by Scott G. WintertonDC-10 Tanker 911 on the Robbers Fire in California July 15, 2012. Photo by David Wilson. (Click to see a larger version.)DC-10 Tanker 911 on the Robbers fire in California, July 15, 2012. Photo by David Wilson. (Click to see a larger version.)
Tanker 123 crash near Estes Park, CO, July 18, 2002. Credit: Matt Inden – Special to The News
Ten years ago today, on June 18, 2002, the second air tanker crash of the year occurred, killing the two-person crew of Tanker 123, as one of the wings fell off of the PB4Y-2 as it was operating over the Big Elk fire near Estes Park, Colorado.
Tanker 123 at Chester, CA in the late 1990s. Photo from Wikipedia
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found extensive stress fatigue and fractures in key components of the aircraft, which was manufactured in 1945 for the U.S. Navy, transferred to the Coast Guard in 1952, discarded in 1956, and converted into an air tanker in 1958.
This crash occurred just a month after another fatal air tanker crash. Near Walker, California on June 17, Tanker 130, a C-130A, experienced a major structural failure. As you can see in the video below, both wings fell off the aircraft just after it completed a retardant drop. The three members of the crew were killed.
The NTSB also found fatigue cracks on that aircraft, which was built in 1957, discarded by the military in 1978, and converted into an air tanker in 1988. At the time of the crash, the airframe had logged 21,863 flight hours.
Tanker 130, circa early 2002. Photo from Wikipedia
Following the crashes, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management commissioned the Blue Ribbon Fact Finding Panel on Aviation to “identify key information for planning the safe and effective future of the aviation program.” It was led by James E. Hall, who had served for seven years as Chairman of the NTSB. After their December 2002 report, the USFS and the BLM declined to renew the contracts on nine C-130A and PB4Y-2 air tankers, and ordered the remaining large air tankers to undergo an improved inspection program before they returned to active service.
Memorial for the 2002 air tanker crews, at Greybull airport. Photo by Bill Gabbert, July 14, 2012.
A P2V over the Whoopup Fire, July 18, 2011. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
We were recently interviewed by Steve Wilent who wrote an article about what we are calling the air tanker crisis for The Forestry Source, a publication of the Society of American Foresters. The article is reprinted here with their permission.
Forest Service Bolsters Airtanker Fleet After Two Crashes
By Steve Wilent, Editor, The Forestry Source
As massive wildfires burning in the Southwest made for an ominous beginning to the 2012 fire season, two airtankers crashed in June, leaving two crew members dead and underscoring warnings about the safety of the US Forest Service’s aging and depleted fleet. Both aircraft were 50-year-old Lockheed P2Vs originally designed for US military anti-submarine patrols. With the crashes, the agency had just 9 large airtankers under contract, down from a fleet of 44 in 2002.
The two firefighters died in the same June 3 crash in western Utah when their P2V veered off course and slammed into mountainous terrain, according to a preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report. The second accident occurred on the same day near Reno, Nevada, when another P2V crash-landed after its landing gear failed to deploy.
“The pilots of Tanker 11 lost their lives protecting public safety and natural resources,” said Tom Harbour, Director of Fire and Aviation Management for the U.S. Forest Service. “As the entire fire and aviation community grieves their loss, we must ensure that we maintain our capability to fulfill our responsibilities to be prepared to respond vigorously to wildfires threatening people, communities, infrastructure, and natural and cultural resources.”
On June 11, the agency announced the addition of eight aircraft to the fleet, including one DC-10, and said it would arrange for 5 additional large helicopters to be activated earlier than scheduled. On June 13, President Obama signed a bill, rushed through Congress after the two crashes, that waives certain Forest Service airtanker contracting requirements, allowing the agency to speed up issuing contracts for “next generation” aircraft.
Even before the crashes, critics called for strengthening of the agency’s weakened airtanker fleet.
“With an aging fleet that has dwindled from 44 airtankers in 2002 to 11 this year, and will continue to decline in the years to come, I am unconvinced the USFS’s current airtanker fleet is prepared to adequately address an immense wildfire or even what is sure to be a long fire season,” wrote Colorado Sen. Mark Udall in an April 12 letter to Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.
Such concerns are not new. Following the crashes of two airtankers in 2002—one of which was filmed by a television news crew as its wings broke off in mid-air—the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management commissioned a Blue Ribbon Panel to assess the federal wildfire aviation program. Among its eight major findings, the panel determined that “The safety record of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters used in wildland fire management is unacceptable.” The report is available on the Source Extras page, www.safnet.org/members/archive/source_extras.cfm.
Since then, more-stringent safety requirements and inspections have led to many aircraft being deemed less than airworthy, a key factor in the reduction in the fleet’s numbers.
In February, the Forest Service released a “Large Airtanker Modernization Strategy” (www.fs.fed.us/fire/aviation/) that recommended contracting for 18 to 28 “next generation” large airtankers that are more reliable, faster, and can carry more retardant than the “legacy” airtankers.
2002 Report Still Valid
Former Texas state forester Jim Hull, now retired, was co-chair of the Blue Ribbon Panel.
“The report that we did nearly a decade ago is just as valid today as it was back then,” Hull said in a June interview. “There has been a continuous cycle of trying to use the old, worn-out military planes, and we’ve been doing this now for over 50 years. At some point, somebody’s got to wake up and realize that we’ve got to do something different.”
However, Hull cautions against assuming that the age of the aircraft had anything to do with the two crashes in June, pending a final report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
“It seems to me that one of our findings seems to be continually overlooked,” Hull said. “And that is the fact that no one in Congress or the administrations since then, whichever party has been in power, has seemed inclined to wake up to the fact that this is a national issue. It’s not a Forest Service or BLM issue, it’s a national issue—it’s going to take national leadership to provide adequate aerial firefighting capability for the nation. You can’t blame the agencies. I think they’re probably doing the best that they can possibly do with the funds that they have. Until the leadership of the nation is willing to mandate [the establishment of a modern airtanker fleet] and the funding to go with it, I don’t see any way that were going to resolve this problem.”
Bill Gabbert, former executive director of the International Association of Wildland Fire and editor of the Wildfire Today web site (wildfiretoday.com), said the Forest Service bears the responsibility for the state of the airtanker fleet.
“Since the fatal crashes in 2002, the Forest Service just hasn’t stepped up to the plate to make any decisions,” Gabbert said. “They have not shown any leadership on how to rebuild the fleet. They have managed the problem strictly in a negative sense, by banning certain types of aircraft from the fleet, but they haven’t done anything to encourage or make it easier for the private contractors to add to their fleets. It’s extremely difficult under the current procedures for a private vendor to buy an aircraft and pay to have it retrofitted as an airtanker.”
A key factor, Gabbert said, is that a contractor seeking a loan to buy and retrofit an aircraft can’t show a bank that it will receive enough income to justify the loan.
“There’s no guarantee that a contractor will receive a certain amount of income, even if they do get a contract for an aircraft. They don’t know how much they will fly or how much they will make. They don’t know if the aircraft will pass tests by the Inter-Agency Airtanker Board. There are just too many unknowns. There are just too many unknowns,” said Gabbert.
The solution, said Gabbert, is for the agency to purchase its own airtankers.
“I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that about the only way to ensure that we rebuild the fleet with safe aircraft is for the Forest Service to come up with a specific proposal, not one full of generalities like they did a few months ago [with the Large Airtanker Modernization Strategy],” he said. “They need to submit a specific, detailed proposal to Congress to ask for money to buy brand-new aircraft, including funding to retrofit them as airtankers. Brand-new, state-of-the-art, safe aircraft. And then they should issue contracts to private contractors to fly and maintain those airtankers. If we don’t do that, then we are just going to get more old, discarded aircraft.”
A single engine air tanker (SEAT) veered off the runway while it was attempting to take off at Cedar City, Utah on July 12. There were strong winds at the time due to thunderstorms in the area. The SEAT, Tanker 896, apparently lost control due to the wind and exited the runway, but remained upright.
Our source told us that there were no injuries and that there was minimal obvious damage to the aircraft. However, it was removed from the airport on July 15 by the owner, who replaced it with another SEAT.
A SAFECOM report was filed, but it has not yet appeared on the web site.
Mandatory availability periods for large exclusive use air tankers, 2012.* NIFC/Wildfire Today. (Click to enlarge)
Having only 9 large air tankers on full time exclusive use contracts is a major reduction from the 44 we had in 2002, but after September 4, 2012 there may be only 6 working, unless the U.S. Forest Service extends them beyond the mandatory availability period specified in their contracts. The above chart, which we prepared using data supplied by the National Interagency Fire Center, shows the mandatory availability period for the 11 air tankers that we started with at the beginning of the 2012 fire season. We lost two on June 3 when one crashed, killing the two person crew, and a second that was damaged after the landing gear failed to fully extend upon landing.
Knowing at the beginning of the fire season that only 11 air tankers would be available, the USFS still only scheduled each air tanker on a staggered basis for five to six months each, rather than extending the beginning and ending times for each of these limited resources. In a normal wildfire year with normal weather, the fire season in the northern latitudes begins to decline in September. We no longer have “normal”, and even if we did, having only 6 air tankers after September 4 makes it impossible to initial attack new fires with both air and ground resources, increasing the chance that some fires will become large, destructive, and very, very expensive to suppress. Some may even cause fatalities and destroy hundreds of homes as we have seen too often this year already.
As a minimum, during the short term, the availability periods for all nine air tankers that are left on long term contracts should be extended until November 30, IF the vendors can supply crews to maintain and fly the aircraft during those time frames. And the three very large air tankers, the two DC-10s and the 747, should be brought on and awarded long term exclusive use contracts.
In addition, instead of shutting down every air tanker for one day a week while the flight crew takes a well-deserved day off, bring in a relief crew to fly the aircraft for one or even two days. And even use relief crews to give the pilots a week off once or twice a summer, reducing the hardship on them and their families. This could improve the turnover rate of flight crews who are typically away from home for much of the year.
Before the end of this year, Neptune expects to bring on two additional BAe-146 air tankers, and Minden has plans to deploy one BAe-146. In 2013 there should be four more air tankers: an additional BAe-146 from Minden, two MD87s from Aero Air, and one RG85 from Aero Flite.
For the long term, the USFS should, instead of adding just 7 air tankers over the next two years, that number should be increased to 25 to 30 over the next 4 years, bringing the total number of air tankers to 35 to 40.
Source: National Interagency Fire Center
*Note about the chart: The ending date for Tanker 40 is unclear, since the contract list, as shown above, lists the date as October 43, 2012.
Four employees of Aero Union contacted Wildfire Today and followed up with a letter, saying the company still exists, in spite of the attempt to sell their assets in a February auction. The air tankers and the items related to the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) did not sell in the auction. Aero Union still controls the assets and they have not been turned over to a bank, according to Thomas F. Dooney, the Chief Financial Officer, who called us and signed the letter along with Leigh Ann Ackermann (Director of Operations), and two Co-Directors of Maintenance, Jerry Edwards and Mike Prunty.
CNN did a story on the state of the air tanker fleet (below) and pointed out that the Aero Union P-3 air tankers meet the FAA standards but “sit idle because they don’t meet US Forest Service requirements”.
The Forest Service cancelled the contract for the company’s eight P-3 air tankers saying that the company did not meet the safety standards which were specified in the contract. The USFS requires a Continued Airworthiness Program be followed for the air tankers they have under contract, all of which are at least 20 to 50 years old. The last P-3s were produced in 1990, and 8 of the 9 large air tankers remaining under exclusive use contracts are P2Vs that were built in the 1950s.
The employees that contacted us said the USFS has recently indicated a willingness to consider the P-3 under a “legacy contract” in 2013, for older, not “next generation” aircraft. The four of them said some of the eight Aero Union P-3s could be flying over fires in 4 to 6 weeks if they had a contract with the USFS. In order for that to happen some financial issues would have to be resolved and maintenance would have to be done on some of the aircraft. Seven of them are sitting at McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, and one was in the middle of major maintenance when the contract dispute occurred and is still torn down.
However, the P-3 appears to meet the USFS specifications for their next generation air tankers, which require turbine engines, a cruise speed of 300 knots, and a 3,000-gallon capacity.
