Large Fires in northern Mexico, visible light satellite photo by NASA, April 9, 2011Large Fires in northern Mexico, infrared and visible light satellite photo by NASA, April 9, 2011
Two large fires in northern Mexico’s state of Coahuila, 60 miles south of the Texas border, have burned 245,000 acres since lighting started the fires on March 16. Mexico has asked the United States and Canada for air tankers to assist in suppressing the fires. Wildfire Today has learned that the U.S. is considering dispatching a National Incident Management Organization team (NIMO) to help manage the fires, but no decisions have yet been made.
As we reported on Tuesday, the Comisión Nacional Forestal (CONAFOR, Mexico’s National Forest Service) has contracted with Evergreen for their Boeing 747 Supertanker. It will be based and reloaded at Lackland Air Force base near San Antonio, Texas, from which Evergreen expects one hour turnarounds to the fires. The 747 arrived at Lackland Tuesday afternoon. The Supertanker can carry up to 21,000 gallons of retardant, seven times the capacity of conventional “large” air tankers. Three other air tankers will also be working on the fires.
File photo of the 747 dropping in Haifa Israel Dec 5 2010
Evergreen’s 747 Supertanker is en route to Mexico to help suppress five fires that are burning in the state of Coahuila, which shares a border with Texas. The aircraft departed Pinal Air Park near Tucson this afternoon and arrived at Lackland Air Force base near San Antonio, Texas at 5:21 MT today.
Steve Daniels of Evergreen told Wildfire Today that he expects the 747 to make its first drops later today. Lackland is about 140 miles from the fires, 15-20 minutes in a 747, so the Supertanker will be based at Lackland and will be reloading retardant there also. The Supertanker cruises at 500-550 knots (575 to 632 mph), which will mean the ship can do turn-arounds in about an hour, that is, depart Lackland, travel to the fires, drop, return, and reload. Evergreen has arranged for ICL Performance Products to have four to five trucks waiting at Lackland with tanks of already-mixed retardant.
Daniels said the Supertanker will be working through Conafor, the Comisión Nacional Forestal.
Leland Snow, the founder of Air Tractor, Inc., which manufactures one of the more popular brands of single engine air tankers, passed away Sunday morning, February 20, 2011 while jogging near his home. He was 80 years old.
Here are some excerpts from the announcement at Air Tractor.
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Snow leaves behind a 53-year legacy of aircraft design and innovations that ushered in the era of the modern aerial spray plane. Olney Texas-based Air Tractor, the company he founded in 1972, produces the world’s most popular aerial spray aircraft and single engine air tankers for aerial firefighting. The company’s product line includes 400, 500, 600 800 and 1,000-gallon capacity aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney piston or turbine engines. They are used for agricultural purposes, forest and wildfire fighting, narcotic crop eradication, fuel-hauling, fighting locust plagues, and cleaning up oil spills in coastal waters.
Leland Snow designed his first aerial spray airplane, the S-1, in 1951. The 23-year old Snow completed test flights with the S-1 in 1953. Snow’s S-1 flew dusting and spraying jobs in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and in Nicaragua until 1957. He followed-up the S-1 with the models S-2A and S-2B, which were built when Snow moved to production facilities in Olney, Texas in 1958.
In 1965, Leland Snow sold his company to Rockwell-Standard and was appointed a Vice President of the Aero Commander division. During this time, the Model S-2R was developed and named the Thrush. The first 100 Thrush aircraft were built at the Olney Division before the plant was closed and Thrush production moved to Georgia in 1970. More than 500 aircraft were produced under Snow Aeronautical Corporation and Rockwell-Standard in Olney.
Snow resigned from Rockwell and devoted the next two years designing the Air Tractor. Construction began in 1972 on the Air Tractor AT-300, which later became the AT-301. Air Tractor’s first turbine engine powered aircraft, the AT-302, was introduced in 1977. In 1990, Air Tractor introduced the AT-802, the world’s largest ag plane. By 2011, more than 400 AT-802s had been produced.
In July 2008 Leland Snow transferred ownership of Air Tractor, Inc. to its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. That same year Snow published an autobiography of his career in aviation, Putting Dreams to Flight. Snow was an avid runner, and competed in three marathons, including twice running in the New York marathon. It was a common sight to see him running the streets of his Wichita Falls neighborhood.
A memorial service will be held 2 P.M. Saturday, February 26th at Air Tractor in Olney, Texas.
Numerous reports, blogs, and press releases continue to perpetuate the rumor that the current fleet of large airtankers used to fight wildland fires are going to be unavailable after 2012. These rumors are extremely misleading and totally false, and AHSAFA would like to set the record straight.
The privately operated large airtankers continue to be a viable component of wildland firefighting. Since 2005, the US Forest Service (USFS) has required all large airtanker operators to institute a comprehensive Continuous Airworthiness Program (CAP) in addition to the normal, routine maintenance requirements. Under the program, the operator must spell out an extensive inspection, and parts replacement plan, which must be verifiable with appropriate data and documentation. Additionally, all inspections under the CAP must be completed on schedule. This is why, contrary to current rumor, no law or regulation has mandated a phase out of the large tankers starting in 2012–or any other date– and why the industry believes the fleet is expected to remain airworthy for at least another 10-12 years of service.
Aero Union Corporation of Sacramento, California, and Neptune Aviation of Missoula, Montana are the major operators of the large airtankers under contract to the USFS. To assure the continued airworthiness of the Lockheed P-2V and P-3 airtankers, an extensive fatigue and damage tolerance assessment was carried out on the aircraft between April 2004 and August 2007 by an FAA-qualified, independent consulting firm, under a USFS contract.
For Aero Union’s eight P-3 aircraft, the average airframe hours are 17,040, with one as low as 13,900. In comparison, the current U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft averages over 20,000 hours.
The nine Neptune P-2 airtankers have a fleet average of just 9,500 flight hours on their airframes, with some aircraft, as little as 3,000 hours. New FAA requirements for continued airworthiness have even extended the service life of the aircraft.
The chart below shows the numbers of aircraft by type and the life expectancy of the majority of the existing large airtanker fleet. The chart is based on airtanker data from Aero Union and Neptune Aviation. Note the first major reduction of available aircraft doesn’t occur until 2019.
In spite of the rigorous maintenance oversight to insure the continued airworthiness of the airtankers, the industry agrees these aircraft will eventually reach the end of their service life and no longer be economical to operate. The current efforts by the USFS and the private sector are producing positive and specific solutions to the large airtanker challenge without any intervention and expansion of the role of any Federal agencies. The USFS and this association are actively addressing immediate and future large airtanker needs and together there has been significant progress in federal contracting strategies that provide the private sector with financial strategies that will position the private sector to be responsive to the need for modernized aerial firefighting assets. One of the important changes in contracting strategies requires Congress to provide the USFS with authority to contract for longer periods of time than the existing five year options. Ten year contracts would allow the private sector numerous financial options when procuring new large airtanker aircraft.
The public should rest assured the current large airtanker operators are mission-ready for deployment to any wildland fire at a moment’s notice and are currently under contract to the US Forest Service to fly on wildfires anywhere in the United States.
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UPDATE by Wildfire Today @ 7:50 p.m. MT, February 17
More information:
List of federally contracted large air tankers in 2010 revised March 30, 2010
Tanker 979, Evergreen’s Supertanker, parked at Pinal Airpark near Marana, Arizona. Google satellite imagery dated November, 20, 2009.
In checking out the location on Google Maps of a 50+ acre fire that was reported by the Southwest Coordination Center on their Twitter account, I thought I would cruise farther west and see what the “aircraft boneyard” at Pinal Airpark at Marana, Arizona looked like from a satellite.
I ran across Evergreen’s 747 “Supertanker” parked on the tarmac. This was not a surprise, because we reported back as far as October 17, 2008, that Evergreen had been conducting static tests on the ground at Pinal Airpark as well as drop tests over the nearby Black Mountains. When it was deployed to San Bernardino and Israel last year, it departed both times from Pinal Airpark.
Air tankers at other locations can also be seen on satellite photos, such as those at Neptune Aviation at Missoula, MT (imagery dated April 19, 2006), but since the aircraft are much smaller than a 747, they are not quite as noticeable. On the 747 photo, not only can you read the words “Evergreen Supertanker” on the fuselage, but you can almost read the tanker number “979” on the vertical stabilizer.
The Country Fire Authority (CFA) in the Australian state of Victoria is leasing five air tankers and one “bird dog” aircraft from a Canadian company for the down under summer fire season. Two CV-580 air tankers, three single engine Air Tractor 802’s, and a Turbo Commander 690 bird dog are being provided by Conair in what the CFA is considering a trial of the larger air tankers.
Capacity of the CV-580
The CV-580 has been used in Canada for a decade, but this is believed to be the first time they have seen action in Australia. The aircraft can carry up to 2,100 U.S. gallons and has a top speed of 310 mph.
A group of Canadian pilots and mechanics flew across the Pacific with the planes in early December, stopping to refuel at several islands along the way. The aircraft will be based at Avalon, Victoria (map) for the fire season.
The Canadian air tankers will join the three Erickson Air-Crane helicopters, Elvis, Elsie, and Marty, which are also leased for the next several months.
This video shows the CFA testing the CV-580’s at the Avalon Airfield in early February, 2011.
The video below, posted on YouTube in 2007, shows CV-580’s in action, dropping on numerous fires in British Columbia.
In what we called the “Siege of ’08”, four CV-580’s were sent from Canada to assist with the hundreds of wildfires that were started by a massive lighting barrage in northern California.
While we’re on the subject of air tankers, the richard-seaman.com web site has dozens of excellent photos of mostly amphibious aircraft that were taken at an air show in 2006, the Gidroaviasalon (“hydro-aviation exhibition”) held at the Beriev test center near Gelendzhik on the Russian Black Sea. Here is a very impressive photo of the two Russian-made amphibious air tankers flying in formation. The upper one is the Be-200, and the other is the A-42 Albatross. The site also has several other photos of these two air tankers operating at the air show.
A-42 “Albatross” (lower aircraft) and the Be-200 (upper aircraft). Photo: Richard-Seaman.com
