Estimated reading time 3 minutes, 9 seconds.
On Oct. 29, the US Forest Service (USFS) announced that it had awarded a long-term contract to Aero-Flite, Inc. of Kingman, Ariz., for a Bombardier 415 amphibious water scooping aircraft.
In early August, the USFS solicited industry bids to operate an amphibious turboprop waterbomber with a 1,600 US gallon tank capacity, which matched the specifications of the Canadian amphibian.
Companies were invited to submit bids based on a base year and four optional years, or for a five-year contract.
The USFS contract to Aero-Flite, worth US$56,985,390 was awarded on the basis of “best value” and is presumably for five years.
Aero-Flite, Inc. is the only commercial operator of the piston-engine Canadair CL-215 in the US, operating three for the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Alaska, and two owned by the State of Minnesota.
The USFS contract was the second good news story for the Bombardier 415 program in October.
On Oct. 17, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment signed a firm purchase agreement for one Bombardier 415 amphibious aircraft at a ceremony in Madrid, Spain.
The Spanish aircraft is scheduled for delivery in late November 2013, and was valued at approximately US$37 million (based on list price) and included spares, engineering support services and product enhancements.
There are currently no Bombardier 415s registered in the United States, but two new Bombardier 415s (serial 2089 and 2090) assembled in North Bay, Ont., in 2013 are currently registered to Bombardier Aerospace and are probably for Aero-Flite and Spain, given the low production rate.
In September, another new aircraft (serial 2088) made its delivery flight to North Africa, painted in the colours of the Royal Moroccan Air Force, an unannounced customer.
Earlier this year Aero-Flite, Inc. also won five-year contracts to operate two British Aerospace RJ85 air tankers for the USFS.
The two former Lufthansa Cityline passenger jets are being converted by Conair Group Inc., in Abbotsford, B.C., with the first flying in mid-August.
Conair and Aero-Flite, Inc. also jointly own YXX Aerospace Ltd., which recently converted piston CL-215 into CL-215Ts for the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In 2012, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in the U.S. reported that, “the daily availability rate for the CL-215 is about $9,100 per day with an hourly flight rate of about $7,500 per hour.”
