Three dead after Large Air Tanker crashes while fighting bushfires in southern NSW

[KY_EnviroGuy]

11. New background info on this incident.

The C-130 Large Air Tanker that crashed while fighting NSW fires — what we know about the plane
By Paul Johnson

Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-23/large-air-tanker-c-130-water-bomber-crash-cooma/11894892

(snips)

The Large Air Tanker, a Lockheed C-130, went down near Cooma, in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains on Thursday, killing the crew from aerial fire-fighting company Coulson Aviation.
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According to Tim Collins from Upstream Aviation, who has 40 years of experience flying C-130s, they are so effective because they can be flown low to the ground for maximum impact when dropping retardant.

"They're big and fat, they can carry 15,000 litres of fire retardant and they don't have to go fast," Mr Collins said. The aircraft can also be refilled in just 12 minutes and can take off and land on short, unsurfaced runways.

The crew of the aircraft typically consists of three highly skilled people.
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There is speculation by experts based on past incidents as to what may have caused the plane to crash.

"The aerial firefighting environment is terrifically hard on an aircraft with anywhere from 5.7 to 7 times the fatigue of airline flying," Mr Wardall said.
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Mr Collins believes there "are a handful of scenarios that could have happened" with the most likely being the aircraft could no longer handle the conditions.

"The stress on the aircraft becomes too much and it breaks up in flight [is the most likely]," he said. "Or it becomes so turbulent up there because of the extreme heat that the pilots lost control of the plane, or they get into thick smoke, become disoriented, can't see the ground and they crash the plane."

KY........