Europe’s largest aerial firefighting operator Avincis will get five of the newly modified 214ST helicopters from Australia’s McDermott Aviation.
At the tail end of a demanding European wildfire season, Avincis has signed a Letter of Intention for five of the McDermott 214ST medium-lift twin-turbine helicopters, scheduled for a 2028 delivery.
The 214ST offers up to 3,000 kg of useful load, a maximum external hook load of 3,582 kg, endurance of up to 4.1 hours and a cruise speed of 120 knots. Its twin CT7-2A engines and large cabin make it suited to water-dropping, the transport of crews and equipment, external-load operations and missions from remote or confined locations.
John Boag, Group CEO of Avincis, said investing in versatile medium-lift aircraft was essential.
“These five aircraft give Avincis another powerful option within our integrated fleet. The 214ST’s lift, endurance and hot-and-high performance will strengthen our rotary-wing response, while its utility capability will allow us to deploy the aircraft across a wider range of critical missions throughout the year.”
By the end of July this year, Avincis says it had completed more than 12,600 firefighting flight hours and nearly 5,400 missions across Spain, Portugal and Italy – almost 90% more flight hours than at the same point in 2025 – while dropping more than 225 million litres of water.
The aircraft will be deployed across Avincis’ operations to support wildfire and utility operations, with their allocation determined by operational requirements and seasonal wildfire demand across the Group’s operating regions.
The latest acquisition by Avincis follows on from several recent announcements to increase its fleet including the June 2026 order for 15 Airbus five-bladed H145s and 15 Leonardo aircraft, 5 AW139s and 10 AW169s, and the July leasing of two Super Scoopers.
Avincis operates from more than 180 bases across Chile, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Mozambique, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, and the company oversees operations from its headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal. With a fleet of around 210 aircraft (helicopters ~170 and aeroplanes ~40), Avincis has a team of more than 2,400 including pilots, crews, technicians and support.
Avincis is a vocal proponent for the need to expand European wildfire response capacity. At the Aerial Fire Fighting Series: Global Conference and Exhibition,’ in Rome, Italy, this year, it released a report that concluded: “Europe is dangerously unprepared to tackle a surge in wildfires across the continent and must act urgently and cohesively to expand aerial firefighting capabilities and investment levels.”
The full program for the 2026 UK Wildfire Conference is now available with two days of speakers, workshops, exhibitors and a site visit to an area hit by recent wildfires.
Five keynote speakers from the UK, Spain and the USA will talk about the emerging challenges associated with wildfire exposure of industrial infrastructure, lessons from the Fylingdales Moor wildfire and community-level wildfire preparedness.
The pre-conference site visit has been organised for 9 November at nearby Marsden Moor, which is owned by the National Trust.
One of the UK’s largest energy distributors is also supporting for the conference as a headline sponsor, the organisers have just announced.
Northern Powergrid, which distributes electricity to around 8 million people across the Northeast of England and Yorkshire, has signed up to support the international conference.
The conference, which is being hosted by the England and Wales Wildfire Forum, has received support from the UK Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, highlighting the growing importance of wildfire as a major resilience issue across the UK, especially in light of the devastating wildfires this summer.
Wildfire2026 will bring together experts, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, land managers, and more to share learning, discuss emerging challenges and strengthen collaboration across sectors. The conference theme, “New Perspectives, Shared Solutions”, reflects the need for coordinated action and cross-sector working in response to the changing wildfire risk.
The International Association of Wildland Fire is sponsor of Wildfire2026.
Wildfire Today is a Media Partner of Wildfire2026.
After a brief respite for parts of Europe, extreme and very extreme wildfire conditions are forecast across most of southern, central and eastern Europe. The main areas of wildfire risk are in Spanish Iberia, France, the Alps, northern Italy, western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Ukraine.
Other areas recently hit hard by wildfires in recent weeks are now at a low fire danger, including the British Isles, Baltic states, Poland and most of Scandinavia. Above average rainfall is expected to continue across most of these areas, with barely a drop forecasted elsewhere.
A new visualisation from Copernicus EU shows the extent of fire across Europe and North Africa during the peak summer period of July and August. There were large fires across Spain and Portugal, southern France, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Ukraine and Algeria.
This visualisation uses data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and shows fires larger than 30 hectares between 1 July and 31 August 2026. This only shows total area burnt, and not other impacts.
Across the area shown, more than 1.2 million hectares have been identified as affected. The circles highlight larger burnt areas, including those associated with 19 fires, each exceeding 10,000 ha. Smaller burnt areas are shown as orange polygons.
2026 has been a big year for fire across Europe with 647,375 hectares burnt. But just not as big as the record breaking 2025, which had 994,419 hectares burnt over the same period. The number of fires is slightly less too – 1913 this year, 1986 at the same time last year.
It is not clear from the data why this chart shows 647,375 hectares burnt since the start of the year, but the above chart shows 1.2 million hectares “identified as affected” in just two months.
The European Unition last week increased its support to fight wildfires in Serbia – 4 helicopters from the RescEU fleet based in Czechia, Romania and Slovakia, were mobilised, alongside ground firefighting teams from Germany and Romania.
The European Commission’s integrated wildfire strategy covers prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. It cites European Environment Agency’s European Climate Risk Assessment on how fire risk is spreading well beyond the Mediterranean, to Scandinavia, central Europe and the northwest. What was once a regional seasonal threat is becoming a continent-wide, year-round reality.
Wildfire damage to property and infrastructure costs Europe an estimated €2.5 billion (USD 2.9 billion) every year. The likelihood of such extreme fires is expected to more than double by the end of the century.
The action plan for the EU is long and detailed, and includes many steps on landscape management and restoration, support for prescribed burning, promotion of grazing and forestry to reduce wildfire risk, enhancement of the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System for fuel mapping, more opportunities for research through Horizon Europe, initiatives to raise community awareness and education through its European Citizens Panel, increase coordinated response across Europe, and support post-fire recovery of communities and landscapes. The list goes on.
Two highlight actions include:
A new European firefighting hub in Cyprus, serving as a centre of excellence for training and seasonal readiness across the region. The new European firefighting hub will have a dual role: operational, to respond to wildfire emergencies; and capacity building. It is expected to host a centre of excellence, focusing on capacity building, training, exercises, and seasonal readiness, relying on the technical expertise and resources of the EU. Cyprus media is reporting that the EU has confirmed the hub will be co-financed between the EU and Cyprus. “Cyprus is responsible for the infrastructure, while we contribute through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) in training, exchange of best practices, preparedness and so on,” the EU said.
An expanded EU firefighting fleet, known as rescEU, with 12 new “medium amphibious” firefighting planes and five helicopters. The planes will be hosted by six EU countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, and Greece. The 5 helicopters will be hosted by Czechia, Slovakia, and Romania. The first new helicopters will be operational in 2026 and the first new airplanes by 2028. The first helicopter has already been delivered to Romania.
The statement makes it clear that this announcement poses no new costs. “Today’s communication does not impose any costs on Member States. On the contrary, it seeks to promote more efficiency in wildfires management.”
Roxana Mînzatu, the Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness at the European Commission, explained the need for the statement.
“Europe must be ready before the first fire starts. That means building a real culture of preparedness: equipping people with the right skills, supporting firefighters and first responders, and helping communities understand the risks they face. Today’s strategy shows that prevention, preparedness and solidarity must go hand in hand if we want to save lives and strengthen Europe’s resilience against worsening wildfire threats.”
A senior European Union official has announced a continent-wide wildland firefighting force but provided few details on how and where it would operate or how it will build upon current cooperative firefighting arrangements across Europe.
EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the “rapid reaction force” would be made up of 300 firefighters from across the Union’s 27-member bloc, according to the Associated Press.
“It is a clear sign of solidarity and that we want to tackle this together,” Hoekstra told a press conference following a meeting of EU environment and climate ministers in the Cypriot capital.
However, Hoekstra didn’t specify where the unit will be based and if it will be activated in time for the next European summer wildfire season, the AP’s report said. There was also no mention of how the program has been in development for almost two decades nor that firefighting resources are already shared.
The EU has also organized firefighting teams and an aircraft fleet for years through its Civil Protection Mechanism and 24/7 Emergency Response Coordination Centre. Countries activated the mechanism 18 times as of September of 2025, a record number of requests from member countries, including the first-ever request from Spain. In total, the EU deployed 38 airplanes, 20 helicopters,and more than 760 personnel to numerous countries.
The EU also announced a regional firefighting hub based in Cyprus last September, which was originally proposed in 2022, according to AP. The hub would have specifically focused on stationing aircraft to assist wildland firefighting efforts in Mideast countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Israel.
At least nine Erickson Air-Cranes photographed together for the first time. October, 2021 in Greece. Photo by Dimitris Klagos. (According to a report from Erickson, there may have been 10 Air-Cranes at the site.)
Climate change, increasing wildfires, and Russia’s war in Ukraine are combining to put unusual stresses on governments, especially in Europe. When wildfires become numerous or very large, threatening large numbers of residents, many countries will mobilize military units. They may use helicopters to drop water or transport firefighters or trucks to assist with logistics. The United States has eight Modular Airborne FireFighting Systems (MAFFS) that can be quickly loaded into military C-130s to drop retardant on fires. Soldiers on the ground can be transformed from warfighters to firefighters.
This year was the hottest summer on record in Europe. It followed what what is now the second hottest summer on the continent. During the worst drought in centuries wildfires burned about 50 percent more acres than the previous record set in 2017.
The Washington Post has an article about how the war is affecting countries in Europe, in this case Slovenia, that need to both fight wildfires as the climate changes and bolster the military as international tensions mount.
“There will be these disasters of fires or floods. It will be more and more common,” Defense Minister Marjan Šarec said in an interview. “We must spend our money for everything that is needed. Because safety has no price.”
“It’s not a dilemma of cannons or butter,” said Šarec, who has also been a volunteer firefighter. “As a serious country we must do both.”
But military leaders say the dual-headed challenge can sometimes be significant, and even contradictory.
“Our training is going on in a military way. Exercises. How to use military equipment, how to fight, how to protect. How to defend,” said Glavaš, the head of Slovenia’s military command. “When you stop this training and you go to civilian tasks you need to focus your mind from fighting to something else. It’s very hard sometimes.”
He said that fighting fires “definitely” had an impact on combat readiness.
Currently the European Union coordinates and funds the deployment of 12 fixed wing firefighting airplanes and one helicopter pooled by EU countries. Fire Aviation reported in July that the EU plans to purchase additional air tankers.
The European Commission issued a press release on Oct. 5, 2022 confirming they are proposing to spend €170 million from the EU budget to reinforce its rescEU ground and aerial assets in the summer of 2023. The rescEU transitional fleet would then have a total of 22 planes, 4 helicopters as well as more pre-positioned ground teams. Beginning in 2025, the fleet would be further reinforced through an accelerated procurement of airplanes and helicopters.
The Washington Post reported that Slovenian defense leaders decided this month to cancel a $343 million purchase of armored troop carriers asthey contemplate buying more aircraft that could be used to fight fires.
Gérald Moussa Darmanin, France’s Minister of the Interior, said recently, “We want to increase the number of Canadair [water scooping air tankers] in our own fleet from twelve to sixteen. But the problem is not to buy them, it is to produce them. Today there are no longer any factories that do so.”
The CL-415 water scooping air tanker has been out of production for years, but De Havilland, which now owns the rights to the aircraft, announced on September 21 the planned construction of a huge aircraft manufacturing facility east of Calgary, Alberta. They expect to employ 1,500 workers to produce at least three lines of aircraft — DHC-515 (a modernized variant of the CL-415), DHC-6 Twin Otter, and Dash 8-400 (Q400).
An announcement from De Havilland said, “European customers have signed letters of intent to purchase the first 22 aircraft pending the positive outcome of government-to-government negotiations through the Government of Canada’s contracting agency, the Canadian Commercial Corporation. De Havilland Canada expects first deliveries of the DHC-515 [water scooping air tanker] by the middle of the decade, with deliveries of additional aircraft to begin at the end of the decade, providing other customers the opportunity to renew existing fleets or proceed with new acquisition opportunities at that time.”
In the near term it does not seem likely that European countries are going to be able to find and purchase dozens of purpose-built air tankers to meet their needs.
Before this year many of the firefighting aircraft typically used in Western Europe and the Middle East during the summer were contracted from Russia. With the war and sanctions that source has virtually dried up.
The Helicopter Investor reported that in April the Portuguese government expelled a team of Russian mechanics working on three of their Russian made Kamov helicopters, and shut down the hangar in Ponte de Sor where the maintenance crew was working. In 2006 the government spent €348 million to buy six Kamov Ka-32A helicopters which could transport personnel and drop water, but over the last 10 years have had difficulty keeping them airworthy. In January none of the six were operational.
The Portuguese Air Force has signed an agreement to purchase six Blackhawk helicopters outfitted for fighting wildfires. The aircraft will be supplied by Arista Aviation Services, a US-based firm which specializes in modernizing surplus US Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Delivery of the first two is scheduled for the first quarter of 2023.
For a number of years Erickson Inc. has contracted their firefighting Air-Crane helicopters to European governments. In 2021 Columbia Helicopters had Columbia Model 234 Chinook’s on contract in Turkey. Single engine air tankers regularly make the migration between South America and Europe as the fire season switches hemispheres.
The European Union (EU), comprised of 27 member states, has been considering since April of 2007 the development of a rapid reaction force that could respond quickly to wildland fires, floods, and other emergencies. The parliament even passed a resolution to that effect, but little has taken place to make it happen.
I recently talked with someone in the UK who told me that in the last 2 weeks, due to last summer’s fires in Greece, the fire on the Greek island a couple of weeks ago, and the recent flooding in the UK, discussions along these lines have accelerated. In addition to other resources, they are considering a fleet of air tankers that could respond quickly to wildland fires in any of the 27 member states. The resources would be funded by the EU and is being advocated by the Directorate for Civil Protection.
