Martin Mars Philippine being retired

DennyA said:
Sadly, it looks like this might be the last season for the Hawaii Mars up there as well.......
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Well that's a total bummer to hear.......:blind:

Seems like the Virtavia Martin Mars Coulson Tanker repaints are the only ones that will be flying in the future.

Tommy
 
More recent reporting... Contract isn't going to be renewed. Apparently Canada wants four smaller $5,000/day tankers instead of the single $7,500/day tanker. Governments...

Why not get two $5K/day tankers and keep the Mars flying too? You'd get the backup of multiple planes, pay less, and still have the Mars's unique capability to drop an enormous load of water.
 
DennyA said:
More recent reporting... Contract isn't going to be renewed. Apparently Canada wants four smaller $5,000/day tankers instead of the single $7,500/day tanker. Governments...

Why not get two $5K/day tankers and keep the Mars flying too? You'd get the backup of multiple planes, pay less, and still have the Mars's unique capability to drop an enormous load of water.
Click to expand...


Well, what possibly could the Ministry of Forests know about the matter, inasmuch as they've only been managing forests for a century, and involved in aerial forest fire control for half of that ....

I love the Mars as much as the next person. Would I like to see them flying? Yes. Are they the optimal choice for today's fire fighting? I'll readily agree I'm not the expert. But it certainly doesn't strike me as unreasonable that 4 newer, albeit smaller capacity aircraft gives more flexible options. In a year, we have many hundreds (into the thousands) of forest fires http://bcwildfire.ca/History/average.htm. So it apart from the concern of the really big fire scenario pointed out by the pilot, where a giant aircraft may have more effect - sheer numbers dictate a spreading of resources that favours numbers.

Furthermore, if you look at where the fires typically occur in BC, the majority centers around south/central. Compounded by those being areas with proportionately more populations means Conair's locale can give far faster response time.

Finally, I'm sure pinning the criticality of availability on a 60 year old aircraft brings in a measure of risk - versus aircraft whose parts supply, repair / downtime profiles are likely better. If a Mars goes offline, the $5000 a day cost differential is moot, if you've got major fires like the ones that hit Kelowna a few years back.

Just saying that we can't let our love of these venerable aircraft cloud our judgement to the point that we're presuming that the experts are wrong. Sometimes they are - but it comes down to more than a reductive assessment of two numbers ...

DL
 
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