It is past time for me to write about the situation with the 2013 Federal Tanker Contracts, I do so now.
Legacy Tankers
You may recall that the United States Forest Service (USFS) awarded the Legacy Airtankers contracts earlier this year. With the announcement of the Legacy Airtanker contract awards there were:
one P2-V on contract from Minden Air,
six P2-V's on contract from Neptune Aviation, and
one BAe-146 on contract from Neptune Aviation
for a total of eight air tankers on national contract.
On May 13th of this year. the USFS entered into a short-term contract for Neptune Aviation's T-41 (a second BAe-146 tanker). So that made nine air tankers on national contract, see the 2013 Airtanker List dated May 23, 2013:
T-48, P-2V, Minden
T-44, P-2V, Neptune
T-07, P-2V, Neptune
T-05. P-2V, Neptune
T-06, P-2V, Neptune
T-43, P-2V, Neptune
T-45, P-2V Neptune
T-41, BAe-146, Neptune
T-40. BAe-146, Neptune
Next Generation Tankers
Let's see, now we get into the Next Generation Tanker Contract awards. On May 6th, the USFS issued a notice of intent to award Next Generation Airtanker Contracts to:
Minden Air Corp (Minden, NV) -- 1 BAe-146
Aero Air LLC (Hillsboro, OR) -- 2 MD87s
Aero Flite, Inc (Kingman, AZ) -- 2 Avro RJ85s
Coulson Aircrane USA -- 1 C130Q
10 Tanker Air Carrier, LLC -- 1 DC-10 (only aircraft certified to fly as a tanker as of 6/26/13)
To quickly bring us up to date on the evolution of these Next Gen Tanker contracts, Neptune Aviation did not receive a notice of intent to award a Next Gen Tanker contract from the USFS and filed a protest several days after the USFS announced the intended recipients of the Next Gen Tanker Contracts. On May 31, the USFS awarded Next Gen Contracts to Minden, Coulson, and 10 Tanker Air Carrier (these lines were not under protest), and one of the DC-10 tankers went on contract shortly there after. Neptune Aviation withdrew their protest on June 7, and the USFS announced their final awards under the Next Gen Tanker Contract adding Aero Air LLC and Aero Flite. The contractors have between 60 and 90 days to get the remaining six aircraft awarded Next Gen Contracts certified, meaning that the all seven Next Gen Tankers should be certified to fly fires sometime in August, if not sooner.
So with the addition of the one DC-10 tanker (the only one of the seven with all of her certifications) under the exclusive-use Next Gen Tanker Contract we had ten tankers on national contract on or about June 7.
Very Large Airtanker Call-When-Needed Contracts
On June 14th, the USFS awarded a Call When Needed (CWN) Contract to 10 Tanker Air Carriers second DC-10 as well as to Evergreen's 747 tanker (20,000 gallon capacity). This is the first time in three years that Evergreen has had a CWN contract. Bill Gabbert broke the news here and reported on the activation of 10 Tanker Air Carriers second DC-10 on June 14. I'm not sure when one of Evergreen's 747 tankers will be ready to be activated.
The finally tally of civilian tankers on contract to date
is eleven: seven P2-Vs, two BAe-146 tankers from Neptune, and two DC-10 tankers (one under the Next Gen Contract and the second under the CWN contract).
I am not certain when the Evergreen 747 will be ready to be activated under the CWN contract, so I'm not yet linking her with an activation date.
The six remaining Next Gen Tankers still have to certified and should (hopefully) be flying fires sometime in August if not sooner.
More information
Bill Gabbert of Fire Aviation has covered the various national tanker contracts (Legacy, Next-Generation, and VLAT Call-When Needed) in some detail, you might want to check out his Fire Aviation site or his Wild Fire Today site. Mr. Gabbert has written a number articles going back to 2011, a good starting point is the article that he wrote on June 17, 2013.
Mike Archer of the Fire Publications Blog has reported on these contracts over the last year plus.
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