Fire Fighting Planes To Get Voice Recorders
As the forest and brush
fire season starts the summer, safety concerns over aerial tankers
have prompted more detailed safety and fatigue inspections.
Currently half of the federal governments tankers used in the
2004 fire fighting season are grounded due to questions of their
airworthiness, according to the Associated Press. This leaves only
16 aerial tankers ready for this year's season.
Those P-2V and P-3 tankers that are in the fleet are expected to
have cockpit voice recorders in place this year, said Larry
Brosnan, the Forest Service's assistant director for fire and
aviation. The P-2Vs, which are older, will also be inspected for
structural fatigue.
Three aerial tankers went down between 1994 and 2002 after one
or both wings snapped off in-flight. The National Transportation
Safety Board concluded that inadequate maintenance procedures
failed to detect fatigue cracks in the wings.
The NTSB says that companies that converted military P-2Vs and
P-3s to firefighting duty didn't have access to the number of hours
individual tankers had flown.
While operators and pilots are concerned about aircraft fatigue
and the stresses on older aircraft, Forest Service officials said
that the problem may have been overlooked inadvertently.
"I don't believe anybody in the past, present or future is going
to turn a blind eye to a safety concern," said Jeff Holwick, a
regional aviation safety inspector with the Forest Service. "We
just didn't know the nitty-gritty of where to actually look, and
now we do."
Avenger Aircraft and Services, a consulting firm that crafted
the new maintenance program for P-2Vs (above), found 47 spots on
the wings and tail that require more detailed inspections to find
problems early, said James Burd, co-owner of the consulting
firm.
The new inspections so far have found some wing cracks that
could have caused problems if untended, but no widespread problems,
Burd said.
According to the AP,
inspection of the P-3s (right), a successor to the P-2Vs, is based
on a Navy program that takes into account factors such as metal
fatigue, said John Nelson, an aviation management specialist with
the Forest Service.
P-3s were cleared for a return to service in mid-2004, when the
government said the tankers' airworthiness had been determined.
While cockpit voice recorders are to be added this year,
flight-data recorders that experts like Hall have recommended are
not.
"We're still trying to improve, still trying to do better,"
Brosnan said. "But it's not something that happens overnight."
A plan for modernizing the overall aviation program is expected
at year's end, he said.