News and opinion about wildland fire
An air tanker crashed in France Saturday while it was fighting a wildfire about 18 miles northeast of Beziers. (map) The aircraft crashed at around 11:15 a.m. while it was making a drop, apparently driven to the ground by a strong gust of wind, according to reports. The pilot walked away with a head wound and the air tanker partially burned. The main fire consumed about 370 acres.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Neptune’s BAe-146 air tanker headed to Texas Having finally obtained a contract with the U. S. Forest Service, Tanker 40, Neptune Aviation’s jet-powered BAe-146 air tanker will be departing Missoula today en route to a fire assignment in Texas. According to an article in the Missoulian, the air tanker will be working on a fire near Longview.
Dan Snyder, the President of Neptune, told Wildfire Today on Monday that the aircraft had obtained “interim approval” from the Interagency Air Tanker Board (IATB) and would have a one-year contract during which it would be evaluated by lead plane pilots, ground-based firefighters, and air tanker base personnel. At the conclusion of that period, it would be eligible to be considered for full approval by the IATB. Snyder said he expects it to be approved, after which he would most likely convert additional BAe-146s, eventually replacing some of his much older P2V air tankers.
Thanks go out to Bill, Kelly, Al, and Dick
I love charts and graphs, and one of our readers has put together a very interesting one. They found data for the number of large air tankers on contract each year and the number of orders for them that were UTF (unable to be filled).
The person that sent us the data and asked to remain anonymous, sent us this message that along with the data:
Bill,
Great website, I really enjoy reading it. Here is a little flame for the airtanker debate. This is a continuation of my comments posted to the September 26, 2011 page.
I was curious if the number of large air tanker orders that are filled each year have changed with the decreasing fleet size. I came across these data from http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_statistics.html. I compiled these in the attached spreadsheet for years 2000-2010.
The percentage of orders that are “unable to fill” have increased as the fleet size has reduced. However, in recent years (2009-2010) with a fleet size of ~ 20 planes, the percent of orders unable to fill were 11.5% on average vs 7% for years (2000-2001) when the fleet size was double at ~ 40 planes. I think this shows that the air tanker fleet size is still meeting demand reasonably well even though it has fewer large tankers available. I’ll be curious to see what this looks like for 2011 and especially 2012 if the fleet continues to reduce.
Of course the number of UTFs for air tankers is affected not only by the number of air tankers on contract, but also by the need for them, or, how busy the fire season is. Here is a chart that I put together using data at NIFC showing the number of acres burned in the lower 49 states (which does not include Alaska) 2000 through 2010. I excluded Alaska because in four of the years during this period they burned between 2,000,000 and 6,000,000 acres, which skews the data. Some of their huge fires see little if any suppression activity, so for this purpose, they are largely irrelevant. (Sorry Alaska)
Interpreting this data is very difficult. I would exclude data for 2002 through 2004, because I believe, and someone correct me if I’m wrong, but due to the two fatal mid-air wing failures in 2002, the number of available large air tankers changed dramatically in the middle of the 2002 and 2004 fire seasons as categories of air tankers were grounded, temporarily or permanently.
If you compare UTFs before and after 2002-2004 with similar number of acres burned outside Alaska, sometimes there is a correlation and other times there is none. For example, a similar number of acres burned in 2000 and 2008, and 2008 had more than triple the number of UTFs. But the years 2001 and 2009 with similar acres burned also had similar numbers of UTFs.
Perhaps we can be safe in saying, based on this data, that if more than 4,000,000 acres burn in the lower 49 states as in 2005-2008, having 21 or fewer large air tankers tends to result in 25-30% of the air tanker orders being UTF, which is about triple the UTF rate when fewer acres burn. In 2000 with 40 air tankers on contract, 6,600,000 acres burned, and the UTF rate was 7%.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized26 Comments on Neptune Aviation’s Dan Snyder, on Tanker 40 
On Monday Wildfire Today interviewed Dan Snyder, the president of Neptune Aviation, about Tanker 40, their new jet-powered air tanker that is working its way through the federal government’s approval process. We have written about this aircraft several times, as recently as September 23, but until now it has been difficult to obtain any information about Tanker 40 from Neptune. They have been hesitant to talk about it because they have been in a research and development mode and wanted to protect proprietary information about this completely new type of air tanker. However, some information about the aircraft is still being held close to the vest. When I asked Snyder if the retardant was pumped out of the 3,000-gallon tank by compressed air, he said he was not able to disclose any details about the tanking system other than its capacity.
He confirmed the information we obtained from US Forest Service spokesperson Jennifer Jones about the “interim approval” that the USFS granted for Tanker 40 recently. He said this status is normal for any air tanker with a new tank design after they have passed a test in which retardant is dropped from the aircraft onto a grid where it is collected in measuring cups. That is the objective part of the approval process by the Interagency Air Tanker Board (IATB). The subjective portion will begin after Tanker 40 is signed up on a contract with the USFS and will involve opinions expressed by lead plane pilots, ground-based firefighters, and the staff at air tanker bases. I asked if another aircraft would shadow the tanker and observe from the air or record the drops with infrared imaging equipment, and Snyder said he does not expect that would happen.
Neptune presently has nine P2V tankers on contract. Minden has two P2Vs, making a total of eleven large air tankers on federal exclusive use contracts, compared to the 44 we had in 2002. The BAe-146 will be able to use the same air tanker bases that the P2Vs use.
The one-year contract that is being negotiated for Tanker 40, which Snyder hopes to be in place before the 2011 fire season ends, will be unlike your standard air tanker contract. It will not be a standard Call When Needed or Exclusive Use contract, but will be considered “additional equipment”, which is sort of a hybrid of the two. When, and if, the USFS sees a need for an additional air tanker based on nationwide fire conditions, they will activate it and it will be managed and compensated like an exclusive use air tanker.
The new contract and interim status are expected to last one year, after which the aircraft could be given full approval by the IATB. When that occurs, Snyder said Neptune will probably convert additional BAe-146s into air tankers.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized13 Comments on Wildfire news, September 26, 2011 The U. S. Forest Service announced on August 15 that they intended to award a non-competitive multi-million dollar contract to the Rand Corporation to continue studying the air tanker issue. Rand had a previous contract with the USFS to provide advice about the long term management of the air tanker and helicopter fleet. The report from that study was due in January, 2011, but rumor has it that their product was virtually worthless and they were sent back to the drawing board. Now the USFS wants to throw good money after bad, giving Rand what appears to be an additional $7 million to milk the public coffers even more. This issue has been studied to death already. The USFS staff in Washington simply needs to review the previous four studies and make a damn decision about how to reconstitute the large air tanker fleet which has declined through mismanagement from 44 to 11. This is turning into a very bad joke on the American taxpayers. Someone needs to put some firefighters in charge a making the decision, like in this classic video.
UPDATE at 4:14 p.m. Sept. 26, 2011; we just found at another web page a “modification/amendment” to the above announcement:
Added: Sep 01, 2011 5:01 pm. Due to the responses received expressing interest in this procurement, the program has decided to withdraw its sole source determination. A competitive acquisition will be conducted after the end of the fiscal year.
This is a good news/bad news announcement. Good, in that there is a chance that someone who actually has knowledge about aerial firefighting might do the study. Bad, in that… ARE YOU KIDDING ME? STILL ANOTHER STUDY! The previous five are not enough? How many do we need? 10? 15?
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The Dollar Lake fire burning on the slopes of Mt. Hood in Oregon received some rain and is being turned over to a Type 3 incident management team. They are calling it 90% contained after burning 6,304 acres.
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Texas wildfires became political fodder on Sunday when President Obama, speaking at a fund-raiser in Woodside, California, said:
I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change.
Mark Miner, a spokesperson for Governor Rick Perry of Texas, shot back saying it was “outrageous” that the president…
…would use the burning of 1,500 homes, the worst fires in state history as a political attack.
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And in more wildfire-related political news, if Congress can’t get their s**t together and pass a bill funding disaster relief, thousands of victims of the Texas fires may not get the help they need to rebuild home and businesses. Meanwhile, more than 3,000 Texans have registered for about $5.8 million in federal government wildfire-related aid from FEMA, including Housing Assistance, Other Needs Assistance, and Disaster Unemployment Assistance.
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Some firefighting resources are being released from the Pagami Creek fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeast Minnesota. The fire has not increased in size in a week or so and the incident management team is calling it 93,459 acres and 53% contained. (Definitions of “contain” and “control”). Yesterday, air resources dropped 267,000 gallons of water and delivered 11,000 pounds of cargo.
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On Sunday the Norton Point fire southeast of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming grew by 3,000 to 3,500 acres and has burned a total of 20,500 acres. It is staffed with two people.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized8 Comments on BAe-146 air tanker receives interim approval 
Wildfire Today has learned that Tanker 40, the jet-powered air tanker being developed by Neptune Aviation and Tronos, has received “interim approval” from the Interagency Air Tanker Board. The next step is to negotiate a contract for the aircraft that would be in effect until December, 2012. The “interim” period would last about a year in order to gain field experience needed to make any necessary improvements in design and bring the system in compliance with IATB criteria prior to consideration for full approval.
The BAe-146 was converted by Tronos, a Canadian company. Since it was delivered to Neptune at Missoula last year, the company has been fine tuning the system to improve the retardant dropping characteristics. They first conducted live retardant drop tests on July 27, 2010 at Missoula during which the aircraft was not able to obtain adequate line lengths for the higher coverage levels. They conducted additional tests during the week of July 12, 2011, and the results improved, allowing the air tanker to obtain “interim approval”.
The BAe-146 should carry about 3,000 gallons of retardant, and has a maximum cruising speed of 395 to 486 mph.
Minden Air Corp in Minden, Nevada is also developing a BAe-146 air tanker, but we have not heard of any tests they have conducted. Other than the BAe-146s, Minden and Neptune operate a total of eleven P2V air tankers between them, which is the only large air tanker model currently under exclusive use contract with the U. S. Forest Service. If a problem is discovered that grounds all P2Vs, the air tanker program would be decimated.
In recent weeks the USFS has hired on Call When Needed day-by-day contracts, eight Convair CV-580 air tankers, three from the state of Alaska and five from the Canadian government after their fire seasons slowed, in addition to three smaller CL- 215 scooper aircraft which can deliver an average of 1300 gals. of water per trip. Also on a CWN contract they temporarily stationed a DC-10 very large air tanker in Texas, perhaps after feeling pressure from a Governor, congressmen, and others. The USFS has refused to award exclusive use contracts to the DC-10s or the 747 very large air tankers, which carry 11,800 and 20,000 gallons, respectively.
If Neptune’s BAe-146 is put on an exclusive use contract, rather than CWN, that would increase the number of large air tankers on exclusive use contracts to 12. In 2002 there were 44.
