Minden Air’s BAe-146 air tanker program suspended

(This article was first published at Fire Aviation.)

Minden Air Corp aircraft BAe-146 T-46 T-55
Left to right: Tanker 46, a second BAe-146, and Tanker 55 (a P2V) at the Minden Air Corp facility at the Minden, NV airport. Photo: Google Street View, April, 2015. Tanker 55 was damaged in 2012 when it landed with only partially lowered landing gear possibly due to a hydraulic system failure.

For more than 15 years Minden Air Corp has been working on the concept of transitioning from their Korean War vintage P2V air tankers to a jet, the BAe-146. They acquired two or three of them and had nearly completed their work on what was going to be Air Tanker 46 when they ran out of money. Problems with hydraulic systems led to landing gear failures on two P2Vs, T-48 and T-55, taking out Minden’s last two operational air tankers, which no doubt affected their incoming revenue stream. Thankfully there were no serious injuries reported in those two accidents, unlike the crash of the company’s T-99 on October 3, 2003 that killed the two pilots, Carl Dobeare, 54 and John Attardo, 51. A lookout staffing a fire tower saw that P2V fly into a cloud bank as it was preparing to land at San Bernardino. It did not emerge and shortly thereafter they saw what appeared to be smoke at the top of the cloud. The NTSB described it as “controlled flight into mountainous terrain”. The two pilots had a combined total of more than 15,000 flight hours.

In October AvGeek filmed a report about Minden Air Corp at the Minden Airport 45 miles south of Reno, Nevada.

Tim Cristy, Flight Operations for Minden, said in the video when explaining why the conversion of T-46 came to a stop, “We ran out of money. Well, the engineering got expensive as all get-out”.

We attempted to call Mr. Christy and Minden’s CEO, Len Parker, to get more information but the number we had used before no longer works.

The T-46 project had progressed to conducting a grid test, which involves dropping retardant over a grid of more than 3,000 cups on the ground. In the video Mr. Cristy said the test went well. We are not sure if the aircraft ever received a Supplemental Type Certificate from the FAA which is a major hurdle to overcome in addition to approval from the Interagency Airtanker Board. After that they would have had to deal with the bewildering and unpredictable Forest Service contracting system before they ever received a dime from their large monetary investment.

retardant tank inside Minden's T-46 air tanker
The retardant tank inside Minden’s T-46. Screenshot from the AvGeek video.

The video below, published June 17, 2014, shows T-46 making its first test drops of water and retardant.

minden air corp bae-146 p2v air tanker 46
Tanker 46, a second BAe-146, and Tanker 55 (a P2V) at the Minden Air Corp facility at the Minden, NV airport. Photo: Google, June, 2018.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Brian.
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Air Tanker 48 lands on collapsed landing gear at Fresno

Tanker 48 Fresno landing gear problem
Tanker 48 at Fresno, June 15, 2014.

Minden Air Corps’ Tanker 48 was involved in an incident at Fresno, California on June 15. While working on the Shirley Fire near Lake Isabella, the 53-year old P2V experienced a problem with the hydraulic system and diverted to the long runway at Fresno. According to Mike Ferris, spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, the nose wheel collapsed upon landing. There were no injuries to the crew.

Below is a video report from Fresno’s KMPH:

(The video is no longer available at that site, but here is another link to it.)

Tanker 48 at Rapid City
File photo of Tanker 48 at Rapid City Air Tanker Base, July 21, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

Minden had a serious incident with another of their P2V air tankers on June 3, 2012 involving malfunctioning landing gear. In that incident 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 pilots skillfully put the aircraft on the runway, finally skidding it to a stop after sliding off the runway into the grass. The crew walked away, but the tanker was heavily damaged and has not been repaired.

T-55 landing at Minden
T-55 landing at Minden in 2012 on only two of the three landing gears.

Below is a video of that incident in 2012.

The same day Minden’s T-55 crash-landed in 2012, Neptune’s T-11 crashed while working on a wildfire near the Nevada/Utah border killing Capt. Todd Neal Topkins and First Officer Ronnie Edwin Chambless. Both were from Boise.

The crash of Tanker 55 in 2012 left Minden with only one air tanker, T-48. For several years they have been working on converting a jet-powered airliner, a BAe-146, into an air tanker. That project is nearing completion and in the next few weeks or months may receive all of the approvals necessary for it to drop retardant on fires.

On June 26, 2010 air tanker 44, a P2V operated by Neptune Aviation also experienced a hydraulic failure upon landing, had no brakes, and went off the runway at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (JeffCo) in Colorado (map). Both pilots self-evacuated and were walking around when the fire apparatus arrived to put out a fire in one of the engines. Neptune repaired the aircraft and put it back into service.