New air tanker contracts

[Chris Kennedy]

http://wildfiretoday.com/2012/06/13/usfs-awards-contracts-seven-additional-air-tankers/

Another article says the two BAe-146's from Neptune and the one from Minden are supposed to be available by the end of August.

[Joe Copalman]

Wow.  Five BAe 146s and two MD-80s flying next year.  As if Willie isn't already the MD-80 capital of the world. 

Also - the article says USFS has issued exclusive-use contracts for these aircraft.  Wasn't the whole big deal about the 747 tanker that USFS wouldn't give Evergreen an exclusive-use contract?

[Chris Kennedy]

Also - the article says USFS has issued exclusive-use contracts for these aircraft.  Wasn't the whole big deal about the 747 tanker that USFS wouldn't give Evergreen an exclusive-use contract?

I think Evergreen said their 747 wouldn't be available unless they got an exclusive use contract. 10 Tanker said they would probably go out of business without one, but obviously their call when needed contract was activated.

The VLAT's cost a lot more for exclusive use than the new small jets will. An article I saw said they will be paid $26,000 per day plus $8,600 per flight hour for this new contract. They supposedly get $10,000 and $5,750 for the Neptunes. Last year the DC-10 prices were quoted as $60,000 per day plus $12,000 per hour on the call when needed contract. I don't know what they would charge for exclusive use.

[Chris Kennedy]

I found some information on the exclusive use contract that California had for a DC-10 a couple of years ago. It was $7 million for three months. I'm pretty sure that was plus an hourly rate when they flew on a fire. They stopped doing that due to the budget situation in California last year.

[FelipeG]

I believe that the deal with those non-exclusive contracts is that you are paid during the duration of the individual contract, so if there's no fires there's no pay, but you can also get contracts from other agencies while the plane is not in use.

The issue I see with this is how the USFS awards contracts (or doesn't!), so having a plane sitting on the ground hoping that you get a contract is not making any money, and the same reason why you can't just design a firefighting system / plane based on "hoping" to get a contract from the USFS (try to get financing for that, based on hope).

The 747 would probably be limited to few bases due to size and runway length requirements, I can't see a 747 operating in Prescott without causing major disruptions to the airport operations, as well as for smaller tankers, but that's assuming that it's small/light enough to use 3R/21L.

I know Mexico contracted the 747 to fight the fires in Coahuila last year, and quite frankly I have no idea where they flew it out of, because there's not a lot of airports in Mexico that can regularly receive a plane that large (I'd say Monterrey is the closest one).

I wonder if Minden will really have a plane ready and IAB certified by August, keep in mind their drop mech / payload system is not the same as Neptune's. Neptune's plane seems to be proving itself as a worthy replacement platform, hopefully Minden's (and the planned RJ85-based one) perform equally good.

The MD-87s I suspect are the ones that are ex. Spanair / SAS that are scattered around Arizona, and since the MD-87 is not a very desirable airplane for airline service, there should be plenty of airframes and spares in the years to come.