King Airs Guide Airtankers in Wildland Firefighting
Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft – including Beechcraft King Air 90 and 200 aircraft – are critical tools in protecting lives, property and valuable natural and cultural resources from wildfires. Annually there are an average of 71,000 fires, which typically burn almost 7 million acres of private, state and federal land in the United States. Firefighters rely on aviation resources to deliver equipment and supplies; transport firefighters; deploy smokejumpers and rappellers to a fire; provide reconnaissance of new fires, fire locations and fire behavior; drop fire retardant or water to slow down a fire so firefighters can contain it, and ignite prescribed fires, which can help prevent the buildup of flammable vegetation that feeds extreme fires.
Fire season, typically early April to mid-October, is getting longer each year and some of the fires are more intense. In 2015, more than 10 million acres burned – the most recorded in a single fire season since the agencies started tracking data. The U.S. Forest Service cites climate change, the growth of communities into wildlands and the buildup of flammable vegetation for making managing fire riskier and more complex.
No one agency has enough resources to manage wildfires on their own, especially during peak season in July and August. The U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Weather Service saw the need to work together to reduce duplication of services, cut costs and coordinate national fire planning and operations. They formed the Boise Interagency Fire Center in 1965. The National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs joined them in the mid-1970s, then the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1979. The center’s name changed in 1993 to the National Interagency Fire Center to more accurately reflect its national mission.
Today the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), still based in Boise, Idaho, is the command hub for the nation’s response to wildfires. More than 600 employees from eight federal and state agencies work together to mobilize aircraft, firefighters, engines, equipment and intelligence to respond to wildfire. While the majority of wildland fires occur in the western U.S., NIFC serves the entire country and in the past year has responded to major fires in Tennessee, Kansas and Oklahoma.
“Different parts of the west have the peak of their fire seasons at different times of the year,” said Don Bell, Flight Operations manager for BLM. “We just fly to wherever the fires are. We generally start out in the southwest and Texas in the April-May timeframe and then as the monsoons hit in early July, we’ll move up into the Great Basin: Colorado, Nevada and southern Idaho. A little later in the summer we usually move up into the Pacific Northwest and Montana. As it starts to wane in the northwest in the September-October timeframe, we end up heading down to southern California.”
Fixed-wing aircraft used in wildland firefighting fill the roles of lead planes, smokejumper aircraft, air tactical platforms and airtankers (see sidebar for descriptions of these roles). We talked to two National Interagency Fire Center agencies that operate King Air fleets about the platform’s use in aerial firefighting.
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management’s Office of Fire and Aviation is responsible for aircraft operation support for wildfire and resource management missions within the bureau. BLM’s aviation program is the largest within the Department of Interior’s eight bureaus. They own a 1990 King Air B200 as a firefighting aircraft and are in the process of purchasing a second King Air B200. For the peak season, they get additional support by contracting two King Airs, which they operate with agency pilots.
As Flight Operations Manager, Bell oversees BLM’s four pilots, is fleet manager and is a pilot in command on lead plane missions. He started his career as a firefighter and became a smokejumper, then he became a pilot and eventually put the two skills together to work for the U.S. Forest Service for 20 years and joined BLM in 2011.
BLM started flying the 1990 King Air B200 in 2015 after acquiring it through an interagency transfer from the Bureau of Reclamation. The airplane had been sitting for awhile and needed maintenance and paint. BLM also upgraded avionics to Garmin 650/750 and installed a smoke system, which is similar to systems used by airshow performers. The aircraft has 14,000 total hours, including about 670 hours BLM flew over the first two seasons of operating it.
BLM uses their King Airs for two missions: lead plane and air tactical, also known as air attack.
“The air tactical or air attack is up above all the other aircraft that are flying around the fire; it’s like an air traffic controller for fires, guiding aircraft as well as resources on the ground, like helping fire engines find access to the fire,” Bell said.
He added: “The position that I’m a part of as a pilot is the lead plane role. I’m generally 1,000 feet AGL around the fire or lower. My job is about efficiency and safety. I make sure we don’t have a lot of down air or too much turbulence, check visibility, go down and look for towers and wires, and then figure out exit routes for the tanker because we are generally operating in mountainous terrain. When the airtanker comes on scene, I’ll go out and join up with the tanker, I’ll describe the drop and then they follow me around and I get them on line. When I’m over the start point, I’ll verbally describe it and use the smoke system to mark it. Then, I turn and climb out of the way.”
The job continues with an evaluation of the drop and repeating the process for each tanker that arrives with a load of retardant. Fire retardants are typically dropped ahead of the moving fire or along its edge, and rather than a fire extinguisher, the retardant slows progress to give firefighters on the ground time to reach the area.
BLM has started to combine the two missions on one aircraft with what they call an aerial supervision module. The tactical supervisor joins the lead plane pilot. Having a second B200 will allow that collaboration to happen more often, and it also gives the agency year-round access to the aircraft.
“In the off-season, we’ll do training and quite a bit of maintenance,” Bell said. “We do two of the four phases of inspection so that we can try to get ahead of the maintenance and not have a bunch of downtime right in the middle of fire season.”
Prior to the first B200 purchase, BLM had contracted King Air U-21, E-21 and C90 models.
“We’ve used the King Air 90s and 200s for probably more than 20 years, and it’s a proven platform for us,” Bell said. “The King Air is a very capable and pilot-friendly aircraft, which is important when you’re flying at a lower level in mountainous terrain. The B200 is just fantastic. It’s faster and the endurance is just huge, it’s like six hours of fuel. We don’t tend to use that, we try to limit our missions to three to four hours.”
U.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) manages and protects 154 national forests and 20 grasslands in 43 states and Puerto Rico. Their Fire and Aviation Management division owns and contracts aircraft primarily for wildfires, but also responds to incidents including floods, hurricanes and other disasters.
The King Air is the only platform the USFS uses for its lead plane missions, and it contracts 15 aircraft for those purposes through Greenwood Group, headquartered in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Each year agency pilots fly these 15 contracted aircraft 3,500 hours. The Forest Service uses several platforms for air attack missions, including a King Air 200 they own and base in Atlanta. They own a second model 200 based in Ogden, Utah, that conducts infrared missions to map incidents.
Until this year, the Forest Service had been using King Air 90s for its lead planes.
“We are beginning to transition to the King Air 200 platform for our lead planes,” said Jason Baldwin, the USFS’s national aerial supervision program manager. “This is a phased in approach, and by July we should have eight B200s operational along with seven 90s.”
Greenwood Group is purchasing existing available B200 aircraft and modifying them to meet the USFS contract specifications. The larger aircraft will give USFS the speed, payload and performance they need for their missions, which typically last four to four-and-a-half hours for either firefighting role. Like the BLM, the Forest Service is starting to combine the missions on one aircraft, with an air tactical supervisor and an agency pilot on board.
“There isn’t a purpose-built lead plane available on the market,” Baldwin said. “We’ve used King Airs now for more than 10 years, and ultimately it’s because Textron Aviation and Beechcraft support the King Air in the lead plane mission. Flying low in this role, there’s different stressors that have to be supported by the manufacturer.”
The aircraft are based in eight cities but move frequently because they are national shared resources.
“We could end up with five or six lead planes based in southern California like we did last year,” Baldwin said. “We move them based on national incident need and priority, and when we’re busy they can move daily.”
Tools in the Air Managing Fire on the Ground
Here are the roles airplanes play in wildland firefighting:
Lead Planes guide airtankers to their drop zone. They communicate with firefighters on the ground and with airtankers, releasing white smoke to show where the retardant should go.
Example aircraft types: Beechcraft King Air 90 and 200
Air Tactical Group Supervisor or Air Attack planes provide coordination of aerial resources over a wildland fire. They provide vital eyes in the sky for firefighters on the ground, and ensure safe aviation operations.
Example aircraft types: Beechcraft King Air 90 and 200, Twin Commander 500 and 690
Smokejumper aircraft deliver smokejumpers and cargo by parachute to remote locations for initial attack and extended support of wildland fires. Typically, one aircraft will carry eight to 12 smokejumpers and their initial supply of gear.
Example aircraft types: DeHavilland DH-6 300 series Twin Otter, Shorts Sherpa C-23A, Dornier 228, CASA 212
Single Engine Airtankers (SEATs) can deliver up to 800 gallons of retardant to support firefighters on the ground. These small airplanes can reload and operate in areas where larger airtankers cannot.
Example aircraft type: Air Tractor AT-802
Large Airtankers can deliver from 2,000 to 4,000 gallons of fire retardant to support firefighters on the ground.
Example aircraft types: Lockheed P2V, Lockheed HC-130H, British Aerospace BAe-146, McDonnell Douglas MD-87, Lockheed C-130Q, Avro RJ85
Water Scoopers are amphibious aircraft that skim the surface of a body of water and scoop water into an onboard tank and then release it on a fire.
Example aircraft types: Bombardier CL-415 and Air Tractor Fire Boss
Very Large Airtankers (VLATs) are capable of delivering more than 8,000 gallons of fire retardant to support firefighters on the ground.
Aircraft type: McDonnell Douglas DC-10
Smokejumpers are a National Resource
A U.S. Forest Service forester first proposed smokejumping in 1934 as a means to quickly provide initial attack on forest fires. By parachuting in, self-sufficient firefighters could arrive fresh and ready for the strenuous work of fighting fires in rugged terrain. The smokejumper program began in 1939 as an experiment in the Pacific Northwest and the first fire jump was made in 1940 on Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest. In 1981, the first woman smokejumper in the nation successfully completed the training program at the McCall Smokejumper Base in Idaho.
Today, Smokejumpers are a national resource. Jumpers travel all over the country to provide highly-trained, experienced firefighters and leadership for quick initial attack on wildland fires in remote areas. Fire fighting tools, food and water are dropped by parachute to the firefighters after they land near the fire, making them self-sufficient for the first 48 hours. Smokejumpers work from about June 1 through October. Over 270 smokejumpers are working from seven Forest Service smokejumper bases located in California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. There are also two Bureau of Land Management smokejumper bases: one in Boise, Idaho, and the other in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Aircraft commonly used in smokejumper operations include DeHavilland DH-6 300 series Twin Otter, Shorts Sherpa C-23A, Dornier 228 and CASA 212. For safety, there is always a spotter on board communicating essential information about the wind, fire activity and terrain to the pilot and the jumpers.
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