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Tag: air tanker

All air tankers are grounded today

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 17 Comments on All air tankers are grounded today
Tanker 11 at Libby Army Airfield, AZ, 6-15-2011 photo by Ned Harris
File photo of Tanker 11 at Libby Army Airfield, AZ, June 15, 2011. Photo by Ned Harris

UPDATED at 5:01 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.

The Missoulian has an article about Todd Tompkins, 48, one of the pilots killed in the crash. The article also has some photos of the crash site.

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.

Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson for the USFS in Boise told us that they have not hired a DC-10, but they are bringing on a CV 580 that is on contract with the state of Alaska, and they are exploring possibilities of bringing on some Type 1 helicopters early, but as far as she knows that has not happened yet.

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.

Video of Tanker 55 landing with malfunctioning landing gear

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

New4 has a video of Tanker 55 making an emergency landing at Minden, Nevada Sunday with one of the three landing gears disabled. We reported on this yesterday and thankfully, there were no injuries. (Note: the video may not work in Firefox.)

Tanker 55 at Libby Army Airfield, AZ, 6-15-2011, photo by Ned Harris
File photo of Tanker 55 at Libby Army Airfield, AZ, June 15, 2011, photo by Ned Harris

Thanks go out to Eric, who mentioned this video in a comment on another article.

The release of the RAND air tanker report is delayed

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 2 Comments on The release of the RAND air tanker report is delayed

analysis paralysisThe air tanker report that the U.S. Forest Service commissioned but refuses to release even after a Freedom of 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:

Two air tanker incidents, one crash and one wheels-up landing

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , , 16 Comments on Two air tanker incidents, one crash and one wheels-up landing
Tanker 11
File photo of Tanker 11. Neptune Aviation photo.

Updated at 10:15 p.m. MDT, June 3, 2012

Crash of Air Tanker 11

An air tanker crashed around 1:45 p.m. June 3 while working on a wildfire near the Nevada/Utah border today. Tanker 11, a P2V operated by Neptune Aviation, was working on the White Rock fire which started in Nevada 25-38 miles northeast of Caliente, but the fire burned across the state line into Iron County in Utah, which is where the aircraft went down.

There were two people on board, and it was confirmed late this afternoon by Don Smurthwaite at the National Interagency Fire Center that both of them died in the crash. Fox 13 reports that “Det. Jody Edwards, Iron County Sheriff’s Office, identified the two victims as Capt. Todd Neal Topkins and First Officer Ronnie Edwin Chambless.” Both were from Boise.

The accident occurred at the head of the fire, which made it difficult for rescue personnel to access the crash site.

Tanker 11, registration #N14447, was 57 years old, having been delivered in 1955.

Our condolences go out to the families and coworkers of the crew.

Wheels-up landing, Tanker 55

Another incident occurred today involving a second P2V large air tanker, this time operated by Minden Air Corp out of Minden, Nevada. Our source tells us that only one main landing gear and the nose gear were able to be lowered and locked on Tanker 55, leaving one main landing gear up or not locked. The aircraft landed at Minden on just two of the three landing gears.

The air tanker was making retardant drops on the George Fire within the Giant Sequoia National Monument in California when the crew experienced problems with the aircraft, according to Stanton Florea, a US Forest Service spokesperson. The tanker had been reloading with retardant at Porterville, California, but the pilot decided to fly to the company’s base in Minden, Nevada to attempt to land. After arriving in the vicinity of the Minden airport they circled for 90 minutes in order to burn off fuel. Thankfully, the crew was not injured in the landing.

Tanker 55, registration #N355MA, is 55 years old, delivered in 1957.

News4 out of Reno reported the aircraft was largely intact and described it as a “successful belly landing”.

When we have additional details about these two incidents, we will post them here.

Large air tankers grounded

All federal large air tankers have been grounded for the rest of the day. Not because of any specific aircraft issues, but in consideration of the crews flying and maintaining the remaining nine air tankers. The air tanker community is small and close-knit.

Other recent P2V crashes

Air tankers operated by Neptune also crashed in 2008 and 2009. Tanker 09 crashed September 1, 2008 as it was taking off at Reno. Tanker 42 crashed April 25, 2009 while it was ferrying from Missoula, Montana to Alamogordo, New Mexico. Three people died in each incident.

Other incidents within the last two years

  • In 2010 a Neptune-operated P2V ran off the end of the runway at Jeffco airport in Colorado after the brakes failed.
  • Earlier in 2012 the crew flying a Neptune-operated P2V  was not able to lower the landing gear using conventional means after having what was described as “a complete hydraulic failure”, forcing the crew to manually extend the gear. It declared an emergency and as it landed at Missoula it was met by fire trucks.
  • A few weeks ago a couple of P2Vs working out of Prescott, Arizona made emergency landings after having engine problems.
  • Earlier this year a 24-inch crack in a wing spar and skin was discovered on Tanker 10, a Neptune-operated P2V. A few weeks ago Neptune told Wildfire Today that they would not attempt to repair the aircraft this year and it would be put into storage.

Nine large air tankers left

Before the two crashes, there were ten P2Vs and one BAe-146 working on federal exclusive use contracts. This leaves only nine large air tankers in the federal fleet, compared to the 44 on contract in 2002. The U.S. Forest Service still has not made any decisions about awarding additional contracts based on their solicitation for “next generation” air tankers which closed in February, 2012. The next-gen air tankers would eventually replace the P2Vs which are over 50 years old.

In December we wrote about possibilities for next-gen air tankers.

Video of the BAe-146 jet air tanker dropping on Whitewater-Baldy fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

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.

U.S. Senator says the USFS has its head in the sand about air tankers

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 5 Comments on U.S. Senator says the USFS has its head in the sand about air tankers

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden has often been critical of how the U.S. Forest Service manages the fleet of large air tankers which has withered by 75 percent from 44 in 2002 to the 11 we have today. We most recently wrote about the shortage of air tankers HERE.

Below is an excerpt from an article in Oregon’s Mail Tribune:

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden intends to hold the U.S. Forest Service’s feet to the fire to increase its fleet of large air tankers under contract.

“The forest fires are getting bigger and the air tanker fleet is getting smaller,” said Wyden, D-Ore., during a news conference Tuesday morning at the Medford air tanker base. “That has left us with some enormous challenges. We’ve already seen some big fires in Arizona and Colorado.

“Despite the enormity of all this, the agency that is most responsible for fighting them, the Forest Service, has allowed the air tanker fleet to shrink,” he said.

The agency had 44 large air tankers under contract in 2006 but now has only 11, said Wyden, chairman of the Senate Forestry Committee.

“And 10 of those average 50 years of age,” Wyden added. “So we have some of these planes that are getting to the point where they belong in museums rather than the sky.”

The Democrat and other senators in the West, including Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, are pushing the agency to modernize the fleet as quickly as possible.

“We now have to deal with an agency back in Washington, D.C., that, in my view, continues to deny the enormity of this problem,” he said.

“It has had its head in the sand on this.”

 
Thanks go out to Don