US Forest Service Awards New Airtanker Contract

I am sure that some of you already know that the US Forest Service awarded five companies a potential of a 10 year contract worth $7.2 billion, especially those of you who follow Fire Aviation as I do. Specifically. Kelly Andersson has written two articles about these contracts, the first was on August 14th announcing the five companies that got the awards, I'll get to that in a minute and a second article on August 17th  where he followed up with some questions that he and his readers had and the answers from  public affairs specialists that NIFC referred him to. I hope that you will read this coverage, especially the Q&A post on August 17th. I am going to summarize to the best of my ability.

Five companies were awarded contracts with a guaranteed minimum of $10,000 (not $10 million) over the ten years of the contract:

• 10 Tanker Air Carrier, LLC
• Aero Air, LLC
• Aero Flite Inc
• Coulson Aviation USA Inc
• Neptune Aviation

As I understand the $7.2 billion figure will give them flexibility in having the necessary number of airtankers in this year and subsequent years to meet the demand for airtankers. At the time that Kelly wrote the August 17th article the Forest Service had contracted with 25 airtankers, a number that is likely to change as time goes on. Finally, there is no limit to the number of airtankers that can be contracted for each year, the only limit is the total amount of the contract, $7.2 billion.

Kudos to Kelly Andersson of Fire Aviation for providing us with this information and for his efforts in contacting a public affairs specialist who answered his questions.