Air Tanker 281, a CL-415EAF, completed over 60 water drops in support of firefighters at the Cedar Fire south of Elko Nevada on its first ever mission. Photo July 21, 2020 by K Mita, Bridger Aerospace.Today the U.S. Forest Service announced contract awards for Call When Needed water-scooping air tankers. They went to three companies, Aero Flite Inc., Air Spray USA Inc., and Bridger Air Tanker LLC.
The estimated value of each of the contracts is about $25 million to $29 million.
13 Comments
What does CWN stand for?
Thank you.
The U.S. Forest Service announced contract awards for Call When Needed water-scooping air tankers.
Hi Bill. Hope you’re doing well.
Hi Ed. Good here. Hope you are too.
Call When Needed: meaning; all Federal airtankers that are contracted with a guaranteed daily availability payment, Exclusive Use (E.U.) are a) day off b) broke down c) committed to a fire. Unable to fill (UTF) “Fill”, obtaining a resource for a specific assignment. If there are outstanding request for air tankers, and non are available or will become available then the CWN list of tankers is activated for number and type.
As a verb: CWN, close the stable door after the horse has left.
What type of scoopers does AirSprayUSA have ?
From where? The production line has been shut down for years.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for not that much water.
I called Airspray in Canada.
The person who answered said they don’t fly in the USA. Also, the call taker had no idea when they started flying the CL 415’s. However, they fly the 215’s and 415’s on behalf of the Canadian gubbermint and they don’t own them.
If the US gubbermint awarded Airspray a contract for CL415’s the news must travel very slow across the border back to the office!
Air Spray has a facility in Chico, California. Maybe the person answering the phone in Canada was a janitor. I resend that last sentence. If you really want to know what is going on, ask the janitor. If at an airbase the retardant mixers and loaders. Air Spray is an aerial fire fighting company (started as a crop dusting company) and has an excellent history of service and accomplishment.
AirSpray USA flies the AT-802 Fireboss SEAT aircraft.
Do they get this amount, $25 million to $29 million., regardless if they are called or not?
On Call (OC) and Call When Needed (CWN) contracts come with differing rates and valuation: the specifics of how they’re paid do vary slightly, but the nature of on call contracts is that if the airplane doesn’t get called out, then it doesn’t get paid.
I have had years in which I went ten months, working fires from California to Florida, Minnesota to Texas, and stayed quite busy. I’ve also had one year in which I got fifteen hours of flying, and fifteen days on the line. Hard to make a living doing that, but it was a CWN contract and that’s what I got paid for, for an entire year. Hard to keep an airplane up, pay the bills, insure it, maintain it, and have it available, when that’s all one gets.
Once the fire season gets busy, most aircraft get pulled into the mix. Exclusive Use (EU) aircraft have a known minimum valuation for a season, for which income can be counted so long as the aircraft can remain viable and available. An operator can budget for that, looking forward. OC or CWN operations depend on a lot of factors, but it boils down to use and the length of the fire season and intensity, as to whether or not the aircraft gets paid, and how much.
For an operator to take the gamble of purchasing a thirty million dollar CL-415EAF, to keep it maintained throughout the year, employ the personnel to do it, to train the crews, etc is a big gamble; the operator has to spend that money and eat that cost whether the airplane flies a day or a season, and then hope that it can keep the lights on. The rates have gone up considerably from what they were. A big criticism going back to the 2002 crashes and “blue ribbon panel” and the state of the industry emerging from that period was that the pay for the aircraft was insufficient to meet the demand of keeping them maintained and available. The pay wasn’t good, for crew, mechanics, operators. It had to come up, and it did, and safety improved. It costs money to put a reliable, well maintained machine on the line and keep it there. CWN contracts don’t pay the bills until the aircraft get used, and some with minimal guarantee, when exercised.
The values assigned those contracts are estimates; it doesn’t mean the operator gets that amount of money, but rather that an estimated budget is given based on historical and anticipated use, and the airplane is awarded a contract that enables it to be called out, and paid. Whether it actually gets used that much, or if at all, or if it gets used more and thus paid more, depends on the demands of the season.
EU aircraft usually come with a lower price tag per day and per flight hour, because the contract comes with a guarantee. They also usually come with a different rate for use pre-and post-contract, which is the on-call or call-when-needed rate. Aircraft that don’t have the benefit of receiving an EU (exclusive) contract with a known minimum income for the year will usually cost more, but may or may not get used less: they do it at the risk of the possibility of not being paid at all. In a busy fire season when it’s all hands on deck, the CWN or OC aircraft may do well, but there are few guarantees.
I can say from personal experience that it’s hard to keep a family fed on two weeks pay and fifteen hours of flying…and it’s hard to find other work when one has already given up the season to be available, and not knowing when one will be available to do another job. It’s hard for another employer to pick up a seasonal guy who doesn’t know when he can start or finish. Such a short season and low income happened to me just once: most seasons were longer, but that’s the downside of being an on-call pilot attached to an aircraft that sees very little use, to say. nothing of the operator that made the aircraft available. Don’t fly, don’t get used, don’t eat. Neither does the family.
Comments are closed for this article!