Maybe Old Planes Can Save the Day

Two disaster categories are in desperate need of solutions — quick, accurate, and effective solutions to environmental disasters. Okay, yes, there are more than two disaster categories, but let’s focus on two: Oil spills and wildfires.

Oil spills are inevitable.

The remediation key with any oil spill — whether it be in open ocean or down a river – is to deal with it immediately, disperse the oil with a solvent to make it sink and degrade as quickly as possible.

The alternative is to set up a sweeping or boom operation, do soil remediation, save thousands of birds and animals who become incased in the slime — in fact set up temporary businesses for months or maybe years. Deepwater Horizon, as a disaster, created 300,000 temporary jobs who did the best they could to clean up the mess (and still are).

The known solution is not what to do — spray the area with oil dispersant quickly before the oil congeals and remains surface floating contamination.

The problem is speed, getting dispersant to the area quickly to sink the oil, breaking it up, allowing nature to deal with it as carbon residue.

Speed cannot be done from a boat. You need a plane to spread dispersant.

A fast plane, fast to get on site quickly, and then flying slow to keep the droplets of dispersant from becoming ineffectual mist.

And you need planes with navigation aids (used in landing) to allow the pilot to fly lawn-mowing-like patterns, straight lines, up and down, for hours. Fly there quickly, spray dispersant accurately, fly back to base, reload dispersant, repeat.

In trials two of the oldest Boeing 727 freighters built for FedEx in the ‘70s, adapted and flown by 2Excel Aviation, can get anywhere in the world within 24 hours and fly 4,000 gallons of dispersant hour after hour over a spill.

A rival company, RVL Aviation, has two retired Boeing 737 freighters for the same mission. And can these two companies deal with river, harbor, and open ocean spills? Absolutely, the 727 with three engines is perhaps more capable at 150 feet above the waves since it can have an engine failure and still not yaw or stall.

The 737 might have one-engine-failure issues at the height necessary for effective dispersant release.

So too with the massive fire-fighting planes, the issue of controllability at very low altitude over uneven terrain requires “platform stability” and “engine redundancy”.

Old DC-10s with three engines and well-retired Boeing 747 freighters with four engines, all now called Very Large Air Tankers (VLATs), are being retrofitted across the world, trying to anticipate needs in fighting wildfires. Cost to operate? $65,000 for each retardant drop plus flying time at $22,000 per hour.

The DC-10 is very stable and an aircraft of choice for tight mountain terrain, and drops 9,400 gallons of orange colored retardant.

The 747 drops 19,200 gallons but needs more flight maneuvering space. The difficulty of controlling these aircraft, for sudden changes in center of gravity and altitude control when you drop 80,000 to 163,000 pounds all at once, is dramatic and requires exceptional piloting skills.

The pilots on these flights, over ocean or over land, are the absolute best there are. Many of them are retired military or commercial pilots, some over 65 years of age, and many donate their time for free to help communities recover such disasters.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.