Heavy air tankers are expected to be flying and fighting fires this summer, subject to more detailed and frequent safety inspections in the wake of deadly crashes.
The federal government expects to have at least 16 air tankers ready for this wildfire season, roughly half the tankers used in 2004, when they were grounded temporarily due to questions about their airworthiness.
The P-2V and P-3 tankers 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, also will be inspected for weak spots in the plane surface.
Three fatal tanker crashes in 1994 and 2002 were caused by one or both wings snapping off during flight, and the National Transportation Safety Board had concluded that inadequate maintenance procedures failed to detect fatigue cracks in the wings. Eight firefighters died in those crashes.
The NTSB said the standards used for the tankers involved in the 2002 crashes called for visual inspections for cracks, but not "enhanced or focused inspections of highly stressed areas."
P-2Vs and P-3s are decades-old, converted military craft, and the NTSB noted in a 2004 report that companies operating the tankers often didn't have ready access to useful information such as the number of hours individual tankers had flown.
A former NTSB chairman said he applauds the new maintenance effort, but says progress overall has been lacking.
Jim Hall, who helped lead an independent review of the aerial firefighting program, said key issues raised by that review, ranging from contracting to investment in new aircraft, have yet to be addressed.
"I think the concerns of the panel continue in regards to the overall safety of the program," Hall said in a recent interview. The fact that the tankers are old military aircraft not designed for firefighting also troubles him.
"There is obviously a greater risk with the use of that type of aircraft," he said.
Government and industry officials are just beginning to understand how the firefighting environment - the turbulence, the force, the retardant loads - affects the tankers. But they say they're confident in the maintenance and inspection programs and in the safety of the tankers being cleared for flight.
"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."
A consulting firm that crafted the new maintenance program for P-2Vs 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, Avenger Aircraft and Services.
The new inspections so far have found some wing cracks that could have caused problems if untended, but no widespread problems, Burd said.
Monitoring equipment will be placed on tankers this year to evaluate the certain stresses of firefighting. The inspection program will be adjusted to reflect the results, Burd said.
Inspection of the P-3s, 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.
Both programs are "as current as we can make them, based on the knowledge we have today," Brosnan said. He expects changes to both programs as more is learned from the monitoring.
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.
Hall, the former NTSB chairman, still is concerned that meaningful steps have not been taken quickly enough.
"This matter is urgent, and continuing down the current path is a waste of time and places the American public at greater risk every day, to say nothing of the pilots and others that are charged with flying old, converted military and commercial air tankers," he wrote to a congressional subcommittee chairman earlier this year.
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