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.

FMI: www.fs.fed.us