Pilots Start Crowdfunding Campaign To Save Healthy Firefighting Aircraft From Junkyard

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A group of local pilots is trying to save healthy firefighting aircraft sitting idle on a tarmac from ending up in the junkyard.

The pilots have started a crowdfunding campaign to help save the planes that have saved land and lives throughout the region.

The six P3 airtankers are turn-key firefighting aircraft sitting on death row at McClellan Park after the original owners went bankrupt.

"These aircraft fought fire for 20 years as the backbone for the forest service firefighting fleet," said firefighter pilot Dale Head.

He says the union contract with the U.S. Forest Service was canceled four years ago due to maintenance disputes. Since then, the planes have been grounded on the McClellan tarmac after a dismantling company absorbed the fleet in 2011.

"What we need to do is fund purchasing these aircraft from the dismantler, restore them and put them back into service, and we can do that in a year," he said.

Taxpayers bought the aircraft for the Navy back in the 1960s, before they were sold off to a private owner who then contracted them out to the forest service.

For two decades, the fleet was used for fighting some of the most ferocious and dangerous wildfires in the county—a testament to their strong and sleek design. Those are elements Head believes are missing from the airtankers being used now.

"It can get where jets can't go and deliver where others can't get to," he said.

But after the forest service contract died, so did the P3's engines.

In a last-ditch effort to keep the planes from nose-diving into history, he created an aggressive crowd-funding campaign that would staff and fund the fleet in just one year.

"For less than a quarter of the price of one new aircraft, we can have six new aircraft by 2016 if you help us," he said.