U.S. Forest service contracts 7 air tankers from Missoula’s Neptune Aviation
U.S. Forest service contracts 7 air tankers from Missoula’s Neptune Aviation
29 March 2013
published by www.missoulian.com
USA — Neptune Aviation landed contracts for six of its P2V retardant bombers and one of its jet-powered Bae-146s from the U.S. Forest Service for firefighting this summer.
The agency released legacy contracts for the seven Missoula-based Neptune planes and one from Minden Air Corp. in Nevada on Wednesday. Another round of next-generation contracts for more jet-powered planes remains in limbo.
This solidifies the fleet for the coming season, National Interagency Fire Center spokesman Mike Ferris said Thursday. Last year, we had pretty much the same fleet for legacy contracts. Then, we had nine. This year were going to have eight.
While Neptune had two of its new Bae-146 planes in service last year, company president Dan Snyder said he opted to offer some of its modern planes under the legacy contract and hold others for the next-generation program.
We will be up to four Baes in the next few weeks, Snyder said Thursday. Were making some significant modifications, so planes 3 and 4 will have new tanks. Theyll improve our consistency of delivery and constant flow characteristics. The gallonage will stay about the same at a little over 3,000 gallons.
The Forest Services next-generation contracts demand planes with jet engines and capacities of at least 2,400 gallons. The P2Vs flown by Neptune and Minden use Korean War-vintage piston prop engines and carry about 2,000 gallons of retardant.
Snyder said Neptune decided to retire one of its seven P2V planes over the winter after determining its airframe wasnt strong enough to endure a full five-year contract. That plane instead will be used for parts to support the other six P2Vs, he said.
Although Colorado has already had one significant forest fire and parts of Alabama and Florida have reported red-flag weather this spring, no retardant planes have been put on duty yet in 2013. Neptune has had two of its P2V bombers stationed in Florida and New Mexico since February in case of off-season fires.
The Colorado fire was mostly a grass fire, but some areas of the country are still dry, Ferris said. The drought map is pretty interesting. Most of the western states are still in major drought.
The Forest Service may bring on additional large airtankers available through cooperators and the military, as well as very large airtankers, single-engine airtankers, water-scooping planes and helicopters. Ferris said the next-generation contracts should be released within the next few weeks.
Last year, the Forest Service spent about $1.4 billion fighting fires on 9.3 million acres nationwide. That was the third-most active year on record since 1960.
The new jets will gradually replace the old P2V rotary engine bombers like Tanker 10, which is now being used for parts.
Corey Hayes with Signs Now in Missoula applies striping to the newest addition to Neptune Aviations retardant bomber fleet last week.
Tanker 41 is the second used BAe-146 jet to join the fleet.
