Engineering

Boeing 747 Supertanker: Largest Firefighting Aircraft World Has Ever Seen

Supertanker is a huge loss to the firefighting community.

Published

5 years ago

August 5, 2021

Human beings have been facing devastating wildfires in recent years as a result of climate change which causes warmer and drier weather that fuel devastating blaze.

This destructive activities release greenhouse gas emissions which trigger further warming around the globe. Therefore, an immediate response to forest fires is of great importance to reduce possible extensive destruction. Using fire fighting aircrafts is one of the ways to curb fires.

Boeing 747 Supertanker and its capacity against fires

US-based Boeing’s 747 Supertanker is known to be world’s largest firefighting plane which is capable of carrying 19,000 gallons of water or fire retardant per flight. To envision, it can fill a swimming pool in about 8 seconds, said pilot Cliff Hale.

According to Cal Fire, it flied 119 times to battle fires last year. In addition, the aircraft was used internationally in Israel and Chile as well as Bolivia in 2019 to contribute to efforts in fighting the blaze in the Amazon rainforest.

747 Supertanker battled California’s historic wildfires last year, and it takes less than 20 hours for the mammoth to fly anywhere in the world from any airport which meets 8,000-foot (2,400 m) long runway requirement.

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Advanced avionics and higher altitude flights are other prominent features of the aforementioned aircraft.

The plane, however, was grounded last April for low profit reasons. Roger Miller, managing director of Alterna Capital Partners — the investment firm that owns Global Supertanker Services (GSTS) — said that the technology investment to upgrade the drop system and the 747 aircraft was very significant.

“The economics under the company’s current federal ‘call when needed’ contract are such that the investment will take longer to realize profitability than previously expected,” he said.

Instead, Alterna Capital Partners said it was considering the Boeing 747 Supertanker a freighter to carry cargo during the Covid-19 outbreak. “The option to sell the aircraft as freighter has been in part driven by the Covid-19 crisis, which has led to a significant increase in value for freighter aircraft,” explained the firm.

Consequently, National Freight owned the Supertanker to convert it into a cargo aircraft, which means a huge loss to the firefighting community against forest fires.