Rocky Mountain News: Tanker plans in air as fire season nears

By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News
April 29, 2006

The federal government is heading into a potentially difficult wildfire season with only one-third of the big air tankers it once used and no long-term plan to modernize the aging fleet.

That's despite a critical examination of the industry in late 2002 that came after midair wing collapses sent five airmen to their deaths - two of them in Colorado - and sparked widespread calls for an overhaul of everything from the planes themselves to the way the companies that fly them and the government do business.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs who are converting commercial airliners into supersize fire bombers have no idea when, or if, they will be embraced by the federal government.

And, in the opinion of an aviation expert who has extensively studied the aerial firefighting fleet, the system continues to suffer from a "mission muddle" born of a jumble of federal agencies, none of which has ultimate control over what happens.

"What you've got here is just a situation of 'Katrina light,' " said Jim Hall, co-chairman of the blue-ribbon panel that studied the industry in the wake of the 2002 deaths. "You've got too many people chasing the same program."

Federal officials defend the current system and point out that more smaller, single-engine air tankers and heavy-duty helicopters are in use. And several military planes also could be used if the fleet is overwhelmed.

"Our effectiveness over the past couple of years has been high - in fact, higher than it had been in previous years," said Dan Jiron, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C. "For the short term, we are going to continue to use that (fleet). We feel confident in our capabilities this year."

In the coming year, federal officials are expected to decide whether to add two new tools to the arsenal - a converted McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and a Boeing 747 - or whether other planes being developed by companies already in the air tanker business will be the answer.

Whatever is decided could fundamentally reshape a way of fighting large wildfires that goes back a half-century.

The current aerial firefighting system traces its origins to the mid-1950s, when a military training plane was modified and used to drop water on a California wildfire.

Within a decade, a fleet of retired military planes had been fitted with tanks to carry water or a fire retardant slurry. The planes were owned by private operators, who flew under contract for the federal government. The budget this year for the big air tankers is $17 million.

A comforting sign

Those lumbering bombers became, for many, the tangible sign that a fire was being attacked. Worried homeowners couldn't see the hundreds of men and women scratching out fire lines in the dirt, but they could hear the big planes rumbling overhead and see the flashes of red slurry pour from their bellies.

The work could be dangerous, and crashes and deaths were not uncommon. But the system continued mostly unaltered for decades.

Then came 2002.

The federal government began the fire season that year - a year that would turn out to be the worst in Colorado history and devastating all over the West - with 46 large air tankers under contract. They were, on average, 48 years old - some World War II castoffs, others built in the 1950s and early '60s.

But that summer was a disaster for the fleet.

First, the wings broke off a C-130 over a California wildfire, sending three crew members to their deaths. Then, just weeks later, a PB4Y-2, originally built for the Navy in World War II, suffered an eerily similar failure over a fire in Colorado between Estes Park and Lyons. Two pilots died when the crippled plane crashed in flames.

In the wake of those crashes, the federal government assembled the blue-ribbon panel to study the system. In December 2002, it issued a sharply worded report, calling the air tanker system "unsustainable" and the industry's safety record - 136 dead pilots since 1958 - "abysmal."

The panel called for a number of changes, including a new emphasis on safety, a modernized fleet, a revamped management structure, more rigorous inspections of planes and better training.

When Hall testified in February before the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, part of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, he was blunt.

Noting that five pilots had died in air tanker crashes - one in 2003, one in 2005 - since the report was issued, Hall said efforts to improve safety had been "feeble." He spoke of the lack of a concrete plan to modernize the tanker fleet.

"That a plan for this has not been formulated three years after the release of the blue-ribbon panel report is so slow as to be baffling," Hall said.

Two months after that testimony, Hall remains unhappy with the continuing lack of progress.

"There's very little to say," he said this week in a telephone interview. "There have been some cosmetic things that have been done, and I want to compliment and acknowledge those, but the core issues, the things the blue-ribbon panel was concerned about, essentially are still the same."

Financing modernization

Today, the oldest planes in the air tanker fleet have been banished, but still, the 16 that will be in the air this year are, on average, 41 years old.

The oldest was built in 1952, the newest in 1964, according to federal records. Those planes have been more rigorously inspected than ever before. But nearly everybody agrees that the fleet must be modernized.

But how?

One of the biggest criticisms of the current system is the way contracts are handed out: They go for one year, with two one-year renewal options.

That system makes it difficult for air tanker operators to justify investing the money needed to develop new planes, said Tim Christy, operations manager of Minden Aircorps, a Minden, Nev., company.

Minden is one of three companies that will fly slurry bombers this summer for the federal government.

"Anytime, from a business standpoint, that you're going to invest a lot of money, one of those things you've got to look at is the return on the money spent," Christy said. "Obviously, with a short contract, it's a concern - if you invest a lot of money in something, are you going to recoup that money that was spent?"

Bill Scott, a writer for Aviation Week & Space Technology and a member of the blue-ribbon panel, believes that modernizing the fleet will require longer contracts and more upfront money, rather than the current approach, in which the federal government doles out enough cash to issue the contracts and then pays for the air tankers through a series of supplemental appropriations.

But he's not optimistic.

"I don't see that happening," Scott said. "There are just too many entities involved, and it's just literally like trying to herd cats."

Still, Minden Air and other contractors are working on various projects to improve their fleets. Minden has converted a British Aerospace BA146, which went into production in 1983.

"It's certainly a modern airplane," said Christy.

And one day they could be competing with a new class of "super" tankers.

One project, being carried out by Evergreen International Aviation of McMinnville, Ore., involves fitting pressurized tanks inside a 747. The plane could carry 24,000 gallons of water or slurry - about eight times the capacity of today's big air tankers, most of which carry between 2,000 and 3,000 gallons.

The plane has yet to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, however.

Greater speed possible

In another project, tanks that can hold 12,000 gallons of water or slurry have been installed on the underbelly a former American Airlines DC-10.

"We think we've got a pretty good product, and we are very excited about what it can do," said Rick Hatton, a former military pilot from Redwood City, Calif., who is a partner in 10 Tanker Air Carrier Co., along with principals from Omni Air International, based in Tulsa, Okla.

That plane, which can drop its load in eight seconds, has been certified by the FAA.

"It works beautifully," Hatton said. "You can drink a cup of coffee while you're dropping."

The plane has gone through 36 test flights where it dropped water and Hatton said it offers some incredible advantages. In addition to a capacity much larger than current air tankers, its speed could allow it to get to fires much more quickly.

"If you put four or five of these in the U.S. at the right spots, you could reach any fire within an hour," he said.

But one hurdle remains before it can be used to fight fires: It must get the blessing of the Interagency Air Tanker Board, a group made up of officials from various federal offices who certify slurry bombers.

"We're trying to get a contract or get it over a fire and prove what it can do," Hatton said.

Dennis Lamun, chief of aviation for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and a member of the air tanker board, said he is not sure how long the process of testing the DC-10 could go on.

"We haven't had an airplane of that size before, and so what the board is doing is working out a way for the airplane to demonstrate its capability in general terms so that we can define the criteria that we want the super tanker to meet," he said, "rather than just taking the criteria for a typical tanker and multiplying it by 400 percent."

But like the specifics of the DC-10 and 747 projects, there is much that is still up in the air concerning the future of the nation's air tanker program.

"We know, of course, we can't be idle on the subject," said Jiron of the Forest Service. "Every year we know there are fires, and we need to configure the fleet to effectively fight the fires.

"But we also know these are big decisions in the long term, and we need to make the right one."

vaughank@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5019