Deplorable Safety Record of Firefighting Aircraft Scored in Report

Air Safety Week, Dec 9, 2002

'The sure sign of a system in decay is one that does not self-correct.' Anonymous

When a safety program is running on flat tires, the wings can break off airplanes. That is the grim assessment of the Blue Ribbon Panel Assessing the Safety of Federal Aerial Firefighting.

The panel was convened after two firefighting airplanes and one helicopter were involved in fatal crashes during last summer's firefighting season, which was one of the worst in drought-plagued recent years, placing a great demand on an aging fleet of aircraft. Five aircrew members were killed in the three crashes. The two fixed-wing losses - a C-130 on June 17 and a PB4Y-2 (a modified B-24 bomber) on July 18 - were recorded, with spectacular photographs and videotapes taken by ground observers of the wings breaking off the doomed airplanes.

The accidents hallmark the cumulative toll of neglect - evidenced by the absence of substantive safety programs and effective oversight.

While aerial firefighting represents a more extreme form of aviation than applies for any passenger or cargo operator, the safety failings in the aerial firefighting fleet are instructive. Certainly the commercial airline industry has experienced problems of increasing demand necessitating high utilization of older aircraft and increasing pressures on maintenance and inspection for assured airworthiness - all in the face of enormous pressure to reduce costs.

So, too, with the aerial firefighting fleet. More fires increased demand. The planes were flying antiques, and the service contracts contained outright disincentives for safety. In terms of unfilled safety officer positions and deferred maintenance, there are clearly evident parallels in the aerial firefighting fleet to the situation found at Alaska Airlines [ALK] preceding the Jan. 31, 2000, fatal crash of Flight 261. The National Transportation Safety Board holds its final hearing into that crash investigation this week, and the board is likely to cite maintenance shortcomings, pressures to minimize maintenance costs, unfilled safety billets, and a breakdown in Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversight - all of which were contributing factors to the crash.

Thus, while passenger and cargo operators are not flying into smokefilled turbulence to douse raging forest fires, the maintenance and management shortcomings that likely will result in complete grounding of the aerial firefight fleet offer an instructive and poignant case study. Recall that Alaska Airlines faced grounding if it did not clean up its maintenance act (see ASW, June 12, 2000). The safety program breakdowns at Alaska Airlines triggered what FAA officials dubbed the National Program Review of the nation's nine other largest carriers (see ASW, April 1, 2002). The firefighting airplane crashes led to an equivalent national program review of aerial firefighting operations.

A copy of the aerial firefighting panel's report was obtained prior to its release at a Dec. 6 press conference. The panelists publicly announced their findings after this issue of Air Safety Week went to press. It is a blunt report, virtually charging that the pilots of the two water bombers whose wings snapped off last summer were the victims of almost criminal neglect.

The report charged that training, maintenance, and other safety deficiencies put firefighter aircrews at unnecessary risk, as evidenced by a deplorable safety record.

The two fatal crashes wiped out five percent of the 40-aircraft fleet of large fire retardant bombers. If that accident rate were applied to the commercial airline fleet, roughly 200 fatal air crashes would occur annually - a rate of four killer crashes a week that likely would lead to a wholesale refusal of the public to fly.

Former NTSB chairman James Hall co-chaired the firefighter panel. He said of the panel's grim findings, "For Part 121 carriers [scheduled air service] the lessons are that if you don't develop a safety culture, don't set and adhere to rules, and don't make the necessary investments, you are not going to have a safe operation."

Demand vs. capacity

The legacy of firefighting operations has certain parallels to the rising passenger demand amidst capacity constraints that characterized the U.S. airline industry before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The pervasive drought conditions over nearly 50 percent of the United States landmass, as of October 2002, has meant that fires in 2002 charred double the acreage than the 10-year annual average. Moreover, the policy of aggressive suppression of small fires has aggravated the risk by leading to a situation where underbrush, dead trees and so forth have increased the so-called "fuel loading" of America's tinder-dry forests. When fires start, they burn more fiercely. With urban sprawl, wildland fires are more likely to threaten towns and housing developments, creating a greater demand for aerial firefighting resources.

The terrorist threat adds a new dimension. If fires are set deliberately, as was feared would be done by enemy agents during World War II, the deliberate torching of the nation's forests would place further demands on firefighting aircraft already operating beyond the boundaries of safety.