Wildfires are burning across Colorado. So why is one of the world's largest air tankers grounded in Colorado Springs?

COLORADO SPRINGS — With the ability to drop nearly 20,000 gallons of water or retardant in a single pass, the Global SuperTanker could be an airborne, blaze-battling behemoth on the front lines of the 416 fire near Durango — or any of the other wildfires burning in Colorado this week.

But the converted Boeing 747-400, which started life 26 years ago as a Japan Airlines passenger jet, instead sat Wednesday on a runway at Colorado Springs Airport, its engines off and its cockpit empty. Lacking a contract to fight fire on federal land, the Global SuperTanker appeared to be little more than an oversized tarmac ornament.

“It’s very frustrating for us,” said Bob Soelberg, senior vice president of Global SuperTanker Services LLC, as he showed off the plane for a small group of reporters Wednesday. “We would like to be on (a fire).”

Global SuperTanker, which carries nearly twice as much firefighting capacity as the next biggest aircraft that is used to fight fires — the DC-10 — hasn’t been completely idle over the past year. It dropped retardant on a wildfire in California last fall and has been used to fight blazes in Chile and Israel. The company, which launched its first firefighting operation less than two years ago, has “call when needed” contracts with Colorado Springs, along with Douglas and El Paso counties, and it is negotiating a deal with the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control to fight fire on state land.

But the big play in the wildfire business is on federal forest land in the United States, where stands of trees go on for miles and fuel is plentiful to support a large conflagration. However, arriving at an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service to fight wildfires on territory the agency oversees, both in and outside of Colorado, has been no easy feat.

First, the Colorado Springs-based company had to challenge a capacity limit the Forest Service placed on the air tankers it would consider using to fight fires. In November, the U.S. Government Accountability Office took Global SuperTanker’s side when it determined that the Forest Service’s decision to exclude the jumbo air tanker — with its 19,200-gallon capacity split between two giant onboard tanks — from competing for federal contracts wasn’t reasonable.

Forest Service spokeswoman Jennifer Jones said her agency will probably release requests for proposal for “large” and “very large” air tankers — which include the Global SuperTanker — by this Friday, but she said there is “no estimated time frame” for when contracts might be awarded or whether that might happen before the end of this year’s fire season.

State officials in April projected that this year’s wildfire season could be the worst since 2012 and 2013, when devastating blazes ravaged areas across the state.

A big part of the issue for the Forest Service is trying to determine the most financially viable way to fight wildfires. The agency has access to 25 air tankers nationwide, Jones said, the largest of which holds 9,400 gallons. Tankers aren’t always the best approach, depending on the nature of the fire or the terrain across which it’s burning, she said.

“Air tankers play an important role in wildfire suppression, particularly during initial attack, by dropping fire retardant to reduce the intensity and rate of spread of wildfires so that wildland firefighters on the ground can access areas and construct containment lines more safely near wildfires,” Jones said. “Sometimes air tankers can’t fly wildfire suppression missions due to smoke or winds, and sometimes their effectiveness may be diminished in conditions of high to extreme fire behavior and spread.”

Global SuperTanker, while not disclosing the specific costs to use its service, concedes that it is a more expensive alternative to smaller wildfire-attacking aircraft. But CEO Jim Wheeler said Global SuperTanker, on a per-gallon basis, is competitive.

“When significant fires in virtually any terrain are raging, the SuperTanker can lay the longest retardant lines in a single pass or multiple drops rendering the lowest cost per gallon dropped,” he said. “Rather than several aircraft flying to achieve the same thing, the size and speed of the SuperTanker make the best value proposition.”

Bill Stewart, a forestry specialist for the University of California at Berkeley who has worked wildfires in the Golden State for years, said the Forest Service has been trying for years to come up with the most effective and cost-effective firefighting strategy as wildfires pick up in intensity and frequency.

“The Forest Service needs to figure out if they are going to use one big hammer or 20 small hammers,” he said in reference to the makeup of the firefighting fleet.

Global SuperTanker got a generally positive grade from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which hired the aircraft to fight fires in the state last year. It gave the plane an “above average” rating in a final report, praising its performance in heavy timber, “wider than normal drop patterns,” and “notable performance in reload times and speed to fire traffic areas.”

Company officials say Global Supertanker can reach any fire in the United States from its Colorado Springs base in 2 1/2 hours or less. And the four ejection nozzles on its belly, which can provide a combined 60,000 pounds of thrust in getting water and retardant onto a fire, make for a powerful attack on flames.

Ben Miller, an aerial firefighting specialist with the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, sees Global SuperTanker as a vital tool in a larger and diverse aerial fleet that includes scoopers, choppers and smaller tankers.

“Every fire is different — from the fuels to the terrain,” he said. “But anytime we can add a resource in the state of Colorado that can put retardant on a fire, that’s a good thing.”

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