BC firefighting aviation company with no contract in BC
Britt Coulson, President and chief operation officer of the world’s largest aerial firefighting company Coulson Aviation, based in Port Alberni, said, that no one if its aircraft is being contracted out in its home province in British Columbia.
On May, Bruce Ralston, minister of forests informed, that all the contracts were signed for aircraft for this year’s wildfire season.
Mr. Coulson said, no one from 38 aircraft in their fleet get a contract with the province. He continued:” I think you know BC has traditionally focused more on smaller aircraft. We don’t run any small aircraft. We see the best bang for your buck and the best results out of large aircraft.”
Photo source: www.proaviationtips.com
“Canada is, I’d say, unique in that it doesn’t have any large ones. They focus more on higher numbers of small aircraft (…) it’s just a very different tool.”
The Coulson Aviation will be converting its first Boeing 737-700 into the world’s highest capacity Large Air Tanker (LAT). Once complete, the newly converted Boeing 737-700s will have an increased capacity of 19,000 litres, something Coulson said was double the size of what was typically seen in Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOWmYl4iE-0&t=3s
If the converted Boing 737-700 will be working in the future for the province is questionable, but Mr. Coulson reacted: “Well, put it this way, the last bid we did when BC Forest Service tendered for a bunch of their air tankers, we did not get any award and we were told by the government that our company did not have the experience required to fight fires in BC,” Coulson said, referring to previous governments.
“We do it all over the world and they said, ‘Well, in our opinion, you don’t meet the requirements.”
The Coulson Aviation has currently contracts in US and Australia.
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