The companies supplying the four additional large airtankers that will be mobilizing to help the firefighters in Australia have been identified. On January 4 we wrote about the two DC-10s that 10 Tanker Air Carrier will be sending down.
Today we learned that two MD-87s will also be deployed. Matt Isley of Erickson Aero Tanker said Tankers 102 and 103 will be under contract with the Australian federal government. T-102 will leave January 13 and T-103 is scheduled for January 16.
One of the DC-10s, T-912 is expected to arrive in Australia on January 15 to be followed by Tanker 914 around January 25 after their heavy maintenance is wrapped up. They will join another DC-10, Tanker 911 that arrived in November.
This additional surge capacity was announced by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on January 4, saying $20 million would be provided for leasing four more large airtankers as supplementary to the normal fleet for the current season only. Mr. Morrison also said 3,000 Australian Defense Force reservists would be brought in to help with bushfire recovery efforts.
Contracts were already in place in Australia for four large privately owned airtankers and nine Type 1 helicopters. In addition they have the 737 that the New South Wales Rural Fire Service purchased earlier this year. A C-130Q and a DC-10 were added in November when it became painfully obvious that the 2019/2020 bushfire season was going to be much busier than average. The DC-10s and the MD-87s (which will be there in a matter of days) will bring the Aussie large airtanker fleet up to 11 for this fire season.
Before 2010 Australia’s tanker fleet consisted almost entirely of single-engine airtankers. That year they began trials of large and very large airtankers, including a DC-10.
In 2018 and 2019 the United States Forest Service had 13 large airtankers on exclusive use contracts.