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.)
Thanks go out to Eric, who mentioned this video in a comment on another article.
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
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.
The Minden Air Corp, based at the Minden-Tahoe airport in Minden, Nevada, is in the final stages of converting a four-engine jet airliner into a next generation air tanker. The BAe-146 was manufactured in 1989 and Minden acquired it, serial number E2111, in January 2009. The new air tanker will be several decades younger than the two P2V’s currently being flown by Minden and the nine operated by Neptune.
Tim Christy, the Director of Flight Operations for Minden, told us that he expects the air tanker to leave the hangar later this month after which “we will start running water through it”. 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.
Mr. Christy said the conversion process is slow. They have to make sure that everything they do conforms with FAA regulations and have been recording every single part that goes on the aircraft.
He said they have a second BAe-146, serial number 2106, which they will convert into an air tanker as soon as they finish the first one. He expects the second conversion to go much faster than the first.
If everything goes well, Mr. Christy hopes to have the first one flying on fires during the 2012 fire season.
Neptune leased a BAe-146 converted air tanker last summer and obtained “interim approval” from the Interagency Air Tanker Board which will be valid through the end of December, 2012. It will not receive full approval from the Board until after it is evaluated sufficiently on actual wildfires and at air tanker bases. There has been speculation that the BAe-146 operated by Neptune uses air pressure or some other pumping system to force the retardant out of the tank, but Dan Snyder, the President of Neptune, told us today that their BAe-146 uses a gravity drop system. This was confirmed by Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service at Boise. Their aircraft, Tanker 40, made a handful of drops this fall in Texas and a few last month in California. Neptune leases the ship from Tronos, and presently it is back at Tronos’ base on Prince Edward Island in Canada for a major scheduled maintenance which usually takes about 21 days.
Minden owns their BAe-146 and is performing their own conversion, rather than leasing a previously converted aircraft from Tronos.
Here are some stats about the BAe-146:
This photo appeared at FlightAware, having been uploaded there on May 15. Could this be the project that Minden is working on, converting a BAe 146-200 into an air tanker that we told you about on March 28? According to the flight tracker at FlightAware, this aircraft, N146FF, last landed on May 15, at Missoula, but there is a rumor that it was at another airport yesterday.
UPDATE May 27
Wildfire Today has confirmed that Tanker 40 is Neptune Aviation’s BAe-146 conversion, which further explains why it was last reported landing at Missoula, the home of Neptune.
Minden’s BAe-146 conversion, Tanker 46, is currently at Fox Field in southern California.
So there are two or three BAe-146 conversion projects currently nearing completion:
But keep in mind, before any air tanker can contract with a federal agency in the United States they will have to get a Supplemental Type Certificate from the FAA, as well as certification from the Interagency Air Tanker Board.
Below is the photo that we ran on March 28 of the Tronos project.
UPDATE July 15, 2010
We just want to summarize the information we have. It appears there are two BAe-146 air tanker conversion projects underway: