Aerial firefighter a rare breed with demands for highly skilled flying, fighter pilot's nerves: Pilots for single-engine retardant planes hard to come by, company owner says

 

Andy Taylor, Owner of New Frontier Aviation, right, and Wayne Faw talk Monday, July 16, 2012 about how they do their jobs of fighting fires from the air. 

(Scott G Winterton, Deseret News)

HELP WANTED: Single-engine firefighting pilots. Must be willing to fly one-seat aircraft low enough to high-five the ground crew, make circus-ride turns over mountain ridges, buzz smoky mountainsides, drop fire retardant in swirling winds, work long days followed by hours of tedium, then consider it all as routine as driving a Honda on I-15. Will need a fighter pilot's nerves, plus hundreds of hours of flying experience and ground school.

There is a shortage of pilots who are qualified to fly single-engine air tankers — about 100 in all of America, says one expert. The only thing there is no shortage of these days is wildfire. The West is on fire, and those fires are being put out by land and air.

"I've got airplanes in the hangars because I don't have pilots to fly them," says Andy Taylor, pilot and owner of New Frontier Aviation, an aerial firefighting company based in Montana.

On Monday morning last week, Taylor and fellow pilot Wayne Faw were on call at the Tooele Valley Airport with nothing to do but wait. They have been contracted by the BLM to be ready for firefighting duty, but today there is a rare lull in the action. In the last few weeks, firefighting pilots have flown 350 missions and dropped 250,000 gallons of fire retardant in BLM's West Desert District, which is everything west of I-15 to Nevada, and then south to Beaver and north to Idaho. Today there is nothing to do but wait in a trailer.

"It's a thrill a minute, followed by hours of boredom," Faw is saying, as he stands by his plane on the tarmac.

It's good work if you can get it, which, translated, means you have serious skills and there must be, well, fires. Faw and Taylor aren't exactly cheering for rain. There have been seasons when they just couldn't find enough fires to make a living. So far, 2012 has been a bonanza.

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Air attack pilots Andy Taylor and Wayne Faw of New Frontier Aviation talk Monday, July 16, 2012 about how they do their jobs of fighting fires from the air.

 (Scott G Winterton, Deseret News)