Two days before Neptune Aviation’s second P2V air tanker in two years had a hydraulic system failure and made an emergency landing, the company issued a press release saying they intend to phase out the 50 to 60 year old warbirds by 2021 and switch over to 11 jet-powered BAe-146 air tankers converted by Tronos, a Canadian company. Currently Neptune is leasing a BAe-146 from Tronos, and due to some inconsistenices during qualification testing for the Interagency Air Tanker Board last summer, was only granted temporary “interim” approval for the aircraft to serve as an air tanker for federal agencies.
Neptune Aviation Services has tapped seven pilots for training on the new-generation air tanker currently fly the company’s nine remaining 1950s vintage P2V Neptune air tankers, originally built for the US Navy as maritime patrol aircraft. Neptune Aviation Services expects to phase out the last ones by 2021, with 11 BAe 146s, slated for delivery to the operator prior to that time.
“Selection for the initial cadre was based upon the capability of the pilots to upgrade to the BAe 146’s advanced cockpit,” said Dan Snyder, Neptune Aviation Services President. “However, as the P2Vs are retired, all of our other pilots will be given the opportunity to transition to the BAe 146.” Currently, there are 31 pilots employed by the company specifically for its air tanker operation.
Pilot training, Snyder explained, includes 10 days of ground school in Missoula, staffed by former BAe 146 airline pilots and training instructors who have been retained on contract. From there, the trainees will undergo approximately 25 hours of simulator-based flight instruction at the Oxford Training Academy in Manchester, UK. An additional six hours of instruction, including the check ride, is to be done in the airplane.
The modified BAe 146s have been undergoing passenger to tanker conversions by Prince Edward Island (Canada)-based Tronos Jet, which is equipping each of the four-engine jets with a 3,000 gallon capacity internal tank. The fire retardant within the tank will be dropped through belly-positioned doors.
One modified aircraft has been operated by Neptune Aviation Services since October 2011, under US Forest Service (USFS) interim approval, and flown by two of the company’s supervisory pilots. The company expects to take delivery of two more converted tankers by the start of the 2012 fire season.
“Given our experience with the tanker to date, we have learned its strengths and weaknesses and made appropriate changes, including some critical improvements to the tanking system,” Snyder reported. He pointed out that the BAe 146 was chosen after more than a decade of research to identify the best P2V replacement.
“The BAe 146 was selected because it is turbine driven, it can carry the fire retardant quantity the USFS requires, and it has favorable performance characteristics. For example, it can fly slowly enough to interface with other aircraft, including lead planes and helicopters, in the fire traffic area, and it can operate out of all existing US Forest Service bases. It also has favorable acquisition costs and economics, in terms of operations and maintenance.”
According to Snyder, all of the aircraft being acquired, through purchase or lease, have been retired from airline service, and are relatively low cycle. “The airframes are generally at their mid-life point,” he said. “We are anticipating at least 20 years of service.” “
The Missoulian reported that on Monday at 11:15 a.m. a Neptune Aviation P2V air tanker made an emergency landing at the Missoula airport after reportedly having a “complete hydraulic failure”. Fire and medical crews responded and were on hand when the plane successfully landed after circling the airport several times with its landing gear down. The fire engines rushed to meet the 50-year old aircraft as it pulled to a stop, but apparently they were not needed.
The aircraft involved was not one of Neptune’s front-line air tankers, but was a training plane.
Neptune’s director of flight operations Loren Brea said a connection on one of the hydraulic lines came loose, and it lost hydraulic fluid. “There’s an emergency backup system that allows you to put the landing gear down and it worked as advertised”, Brea said. The aircraft had taken off from Missoula shortly before and was on a routine test flight.
On June 26, 2010, a Neptune air tanker, Tanker 44, experienced a hydraulic failure and having no brakes upon landing, went off the end of the runway at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (JeffCo) in Colorado. Both pilots self-evacuated and were walking around when fire apparatus arrived to put out a fire in one of the engines. Tanker 44 was later repaired at the JeffCo airport and put back into service as one of Neptune’s nine P2V air tankers. It is scheduled to report for duty for this fire season on May 1 and is assigned to Moses Lake, Washington.
Tanker 44 off the runway at JeffCo airport, June 26, 2010 . Photo: Cliff Grassmick
All 10 of the large air tankers on exclusive use contracts this year are P2Vs. An eleventh P2V, Neptune’s Tanker 10, has a 24-inch crack in a wing spar and skin and may not be repaired. If there is a problem that grounds all 10 there will no large federal air tankers, except for a BAe-146 which has interim approval, and one or two DC-10 very large air tankers on a call when needed contract. The military has eight C-130 MAFFS aircraft that can be activated in 36-48 hours if there are no commercial air tankers available.
The air tanker fleet has been reduced by 77% since 2002 when there were 44 on contract.
The U.S. Forest Service has said they will announce contracts for what they are calling “next generation” air tankers before the end of April. These aircraft will have turbine engines, will hold 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of retardant, and will cruise at 300 knots or better. And most likely will be less than 50 years old. Thanks go out to Christian
Michael Crouse saw our “one liner” from April 17 about a photo gallery of multiple master streams and a tower-ladder being used on a brush fire in North Carolina and sent us a link to the video below shot from what appears to be a police helicopter in Wilmington, North Carolina. The photo gallery and the video are of the same April 16 fire.
Michael said:
…It has our (NCFS) scout plane, A star helicopter, and the contracted Fire Boss all working the fire. It was shot with a FLIR camera from a helicopter. They switch over to the thermal and it is amazing footage.
At the 2:43 minute mark, the video switches to thermal infrared and suddenly the extent and perimeter of the fire are very, very obvious. The video also catches water drops from a single engine air tanker and a helicopter.
Wyoming Air National Guard MAFFS training at Camp Guernsey, Wyoming, April 16, 2012. Photo by Mr. Dewey Baars.
Last month the two Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) air tankers based at the Channel Islands Air National Guard base in Port Hueneme, California participated in training for wildfire assignments. This week the two Wyoming Air National Guard MAFFS C-130s based in Cheyenne did the same thing. On Monday through Thursday they loaded the 3,000-gallon tanks with water instead of retardant, and flew 100 miles to practice dropping on the rolling terrain of Camp Guernsey in southeast Wyoming.
Besides the four MAFFS aircraft mentioned above, there are four others in Colorado and North Carolina, for a total of eight. The military C-130s are used only when the commercial air tankers on contract are totally utilized on going wildfires.
An article at trib.com has more details about the MAFFS training, and also has this about the federal fleet of air tankers:
…The number of commercial tanker planes under Forest Service contract has declined from 44 in 2002 to 11 this year. The planes are getting old and more expensive to maintain.
Western senators have taken note. Last month, four of them asked the Government Accountability Office to look into whether the Forest Service has done a good job of assessing its aerial firefighting needs.
Last week, Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado also expressed concern about the 1950s-era Lockheed P-2Vs that compose the remaining fleet.
“I am unconvinced the USFS’s current air tanker fleet is prepared to adequately address an immense wildfire or even what is sure to be a long fire season,” Udall wrote to Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.
The U.S. Forest Service is eager to work with Congress to develop a quicker and more effective commercial tanker plane fleet, said Tom Harbour, national director of fire and aviation for the Forest Service.
The Forest Service didn’t call on the military planes at all in 2009, he said, and it’s not a certainty it will need to in the months and years ahead.
The P2V air tanker that had the 24-inch crack in a wing spar and skin, causing the FAA to issue an Emergency Airworthiness Directive in February, still has not been repaired and it may not return to service. Dan Snyder, President of Neptune Aviation which operates the aircraft, designated Tanker 10, told Wildfire Today on Wednesday that he is not sure if it will fly again as an air tanker this year. Of the nine P2V air tankers that Neptune has on contract with the U.S. Forest Service, Tanker 10 will be the last to go through their off-season maintenance cycle this year. When the mechanics get to it, they will evaluate what it will take to make it airworthy again, and then the company will make a decision about the its future.
If it can’t be repaired, Mr. Snyder said it will be replaced with another air tanker, probably a jet-powered BAe-146. He said additional BAe-146s are presently being converted from airliners to air tankers, like Tanker 40, which was converted by Tronos and leased to Neptune. When asked if the additional air tankers are being built at Neptune’s facility in Missoula or at Tronos’ hangars on Prince Edward Island, Mr. Snyder would only say they are being built in “various locations”. According to Mr. Snyder, Neptune is being proactive in acquiring additional “next generation” air tankers that are newer than the 50+ year old P2Vs, even though they do not have a contract yet for anything other than the nine P2Vs currently under contract, plus interim approval for Tanker 40.
Tanker 40, the BAe-146, is young compared to the P2Vs, but it is no spring chicken, entering service in 1986. Tronos installed a tanking system that may be a one-of-a-kind; a cabin-pressure-assisted gravity drop design. According to the official U.S. Forest Service Airtanker Drop Test Report, produced after tests in July, 2011, the aircraft uses three to six psi of positive air pressure in the cabin of the aircraft to help push the retardant out of four nozzles. Other pressurized systems, such as those used on Evergreen’s 747 and the military C-130 MAFFS, use 20 to 100 psi created by on-board air compressors. In the BAe-146, after a retardant drop, the USFS report says the lowered air pressure is slow to replenish.
The report concluded:
The system produced drops meeting all line length requirements, but failed to produce consistent results for all coverage levels with any volume released. Additionally, pattern quality generally suffered when the aircraft released all the retardant onboard; analysis indicates that the aircraft would generally produce acceptable pattern quality on the grid if the final 400 gallons of any load was not released.
During the tests ground personnel unfavorably evaluated the tank’s fill system. The Interagency Airtanker Board only gave the aircraft “interim approval”, rather than full approval as a federally contracted air tanker.
We asked Mr. Snyder for more details about the BAe-146. He said “air pressure was not a factor in the delivery of the retardant. The problem was the trail off on half load drops, this is the issue we have been working at addressing the past winter.” He said he “can’t provide specifics due to the proprietary nature of the tanking system”.
Mr. Snyder told Wildfire Today that since Tanker 40 returned from a major planned maintenance at Prince Edward Island on February 26, Neptune has been working on the tank system in an effort to improve the drop performance. He said the company has also been transitioning some of their P2V crew members into the BAe-146 program, undertaking “an aggressive pilot training program which includes several weeks of ground school covering aircraft systems and operations, BAe-146 simulator flight training, in aircraft operational experience, and pilot certification with our in house examiner.”
We found nine flight plans for the BAe-146 originating from and landing back at Missoula, most lasting 17 to 49 minutes, that were filed between March 2 and April 2.
Minden Air Corp. is also converting a BAe-146 and hopes to have it flying over fires this year. Tim Christy, the Director of Flight Operations for Minden, told us that the tank system is conventional, consisting of a 3,000 gallon internal retardant tank and a computer controlled constant flow door system which will rely on gravity, rather than a pressurized system, to force the retardant out of the tank.
Air tanker list
The list of large air tankers on contract this year that we copied from the National Interagency Fire Center web site on March 24 showed 12 aircraft, including Tanker 40, the BAe-146. The latest list dated April 4, 2012, below, does not include Tanker 40. We asked Mr. Snyder why, and he was not aware of it, and he did not know why it was not on the list. We asked Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson for the USFS about the list and she said according to their aviation staff, Tanker 40 still has interim Interagency Airtanker Board approval.
But the list does include Tanker 10, which as described above, may or may not be repaired.
Solicitations for additional air tankers
The U.S. Forest Service expects to begin awarding contracts before the end of April from the responses they received to their solicitation for “next generation” air tankers which closed February 15, 2012. The specifications required that the aircraft can hold 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of retardant, be turbine-powered, and cruise at 300 knots.
Since the contracts for the existing 11 “legacy air tankers” expire at the end of this year, it is probable that the U.S. Forest Service will issue a solicitation for the older air tankers before the 2013 fire season. It is unlikely that a large number of next-gen air tankers can be put on contract in 2013, so we may have to keep the 50+ year old war birds flying for a least a few more years. But, it is tough to predict what the USFS will do when it comes to managing large air tankers.
The Department of Interior has contracted for two water scooper air tankers for the last few years and a similar solicitation closed on April 6. Here is an excerpt:
Requirement for two multi-engine, amphibious, water scooping, tanker aircraft in support of water application for fire suppression missions. …Services shall be for the exclusive use of the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs and U.S. Forest Service in support of wildland fire suppression in the State of Alaska and the Lower 48 States.
Another scooper?
Restored US Navy HU-16C, built June 1953. Wikipedia.
Marsh Aviation may be converting amphibious piston-engined Grumman HU-16 and G-111 airframes into turbo-prop, amphibious air tankers. If “Marsh Aviation” sounds familiar to you, it’s because the company converted 23 military surplus S-2 airplanes into air tankers for CAL FIRE, and eventually replaced the piston engines with turbine engines, making it possible for the aircraft to carry 1,200 gallons of retardant.
Conversion will include the installation of new 1,400 US gallon (5,300 litre) retardant tank with an automated control system operating a variable quantity/constant flow release system, major titanium modifications to the load-bearing airframe, the installation of a quick-change cargo/passenger floor, new Honeywell TPE331-14GR/HR turbo-prop engines, new EFIS cockpit, new electrical system including new starter-generators, new hydraulic pumps and an upgraded hydraulic system, as well as such optional features as an APU.
The April 9 fires on New York’s Long Island were described by Steve Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, as being “The most serious fire incident we’ve had since the 1995 wildfire”. The fire weather station near Brookhaven on Long Island, New York is setting records for extreme fire danger. As you can see in the graph above, the Energy Release Component is running extremely high this Spring, even higher than in 1995. The ERC describes how hot a fire will burn, and is related to the available energy (BTU) per unit area (square foot) within the flaming front at the head of a fire. Daily variations in ERC are due to changes in moisture content of the fuels (vegetation) present, both live and dead. More graphs showing additional fire danger indices for Long Island can be found on the Eastern Area Coordination Center’s web site.
All of this data helps to explain the nearly unprecedented fire behavior being seen on fires in the area. When we posted the video interview with the local firefighter who became entrapped on April 9 and was seriously burned, Tom Plymale commented about the recent incident:
I was on the 1995 Sunrise fire and personally saw 5 of these burned up “stumpjumpers”. What I learned from talking to locals is they got quite a few wildland fires in the Pine Barrens but they are typically small and easily handled. The lack of fire behavior training and experience during extreme burning conditions is what they lacked. After 1995, there was a group put together to try and help these folks get better training but its been 17 years and they could have a whole new generation of people there. Just my opinion.
The 1995 fire and the “CNN Drop”
The Sunrise fire in late August of 1995 burned about 7,000 acres on Long Island, exhibiting fire behavior most firefighters had never seen in that area. The fire is infamous among wildland firefighters for the battle between a U.S. Senator from New York, Alfonse M. D’Amato, and the Type 1 Incident Management Team running the fire. D’Amato called President Bill Clinton, who was vacationing in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, and told him that he wanted military C-130 Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) air tankers to help put out the fire. (As a side note, that First Family vacation was in itself an Incident for the local parks and national forests, and the impacts of it were managed by a National Park Service Incident Management Team, with this author as Planning Section Chief).
After talking to the president, D’Amato held a news conference, telling reporters that the C-130s were on the way. But the IMTeam had not ordered any large air tankers, and the fires were nearing containment using only some smaller air tankers and 12 helicopters. D’Amato went to Long Island, and wearing a Fire Chief’s turnout coat, met with several high-ranking FEMA officials, Department of Agriculture executives, and the IMTeam. He was told the C-130s were not needed on the fire. The Senator vehemently insisted, and ultimately a request was placed for two C-130 air tankers from an Air National Guard base in North Carolina, along with a third plane carrying support personnel. When the aircraft arrived, the fire was contained, but an area was found that had a little grass still burning near a highway, with plenty of room for TV trucks. A C-130 was directed to drop there, but before it could release its load a warning light came on in the cockpit and it had to return to the airport. The second C-130 was ordered to make the drop on the still-smoldering grass, and it did, to the delight of the media and Senator D’Amato.
This incident may be one of the first times the term “CNN Drop” was used to describe an air tanker drop whose primary objective was to placate local residents, politicians, and the media.
