Sometime around 2010 I first learned about the BAe-146 where one BAe-146 airplane was being developed by Tronos and later delivered to Neptune Aviation. Bill Gabbert of WildfireToday reported on September 23, 2011 that the BAe-146 received interim approval from the Interagency Air Tanker Board, he also provides some basic information about the BAe-146 and some links. I believe but am not certain that by 2015 Neptune Aviation may have had at least one BAe-146 air tanker under contract with the US Forest Service. I have no specific information on Neptune's contracts with the US Forest Service and other agencies from 2015 to 2020, but to the best of my knowledge Neptune Aviation has had contracts (exclusive use and call when needed) with the US Forest Service since then. I have no specific information about 2022 contracts, but according to Neptune Aviation's Neptune Today page (accessed on August 24, 2022)
In 2021 Neptune Aviation provided four airtankers on Exclusive Use Contracts with the USFS, three airtankers on Call When Needed Contracts with the USFS, one airtanker on Exclusive Use Contract with CalFire, and one airtanker on Exclusive Use Contract with the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention & Control. Neptune Aviation also had Call When Needed Contracts in Australia and Chile.
For specifications on Neptunes BAe-146 see Neptune's fact sheet on the BAe-146 (accessed August 24, 2022). Briefly, according to the fact sheet, the Bae-146 can carry up to 3,000 gallons of retardant, with a cruising speed of 400 knots, and a range of 1,100 nautical miles. For those of you who are interested, I shared a cockpit tour of the BAe-146 by Blancolirio on October 6, 2021, I learned of this video on Neptune's Facebook page. I am embedding it below for your convenience.
Neptune Aviation has a very nice webpage with good information that you may want to spend time exploring, Neptune has a Facebook page that I believe is freely available without a Facebook account. Bill does a great job of reporting on Neptune Aviation in Fire Aviation and Wildfire Today, his Fire Aviation articles tagged BAe-146 may be found here and on the main page of either Wildfire Today or Fire Aviation you will see that he has a search function with filters that I myself have used and found it very useful, for example when I want to easily review the history of certain air tankersI myself have written some articles about the BAe-146 that I have tagged but Bill has far more articles than I do.
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