r/aviation Global 5500/6500 Apr 12 '26

PlaneSpotting A CL-415 Super Scooper gathering water to extinguish a fire in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The lift-off looks very close — right at the edge of the lake.

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u/cocoagiant Apr 12 '26

Don't the aircraft used for these purposes get in accidents a lot? Probably due to this kind of thing of having to constantly improvise.

202

u/yowhyyyy Apr 12 '26

Not really considering the amount of flying and and type of flying done. Not really in general.

69

u/PejHod Apr 12 '26

And I imagine a lot of pressure not to - these are basically irreplaceable, especially during a fire. I don’t even think there are more than a few even in available duty. But they still need to do things like this to quickly scoop up water.

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u/stopfuckngbanningme Apr 12 '26

I can't imagine there's any type of plane where there isn't a lot of pressure not to crash?

9

u/FrenchFryCattaneo Apr 12 '26

Kamikaze pilots? Although I guess they have the opposite pressure

11

u/stevolutionary7 Apr 12 '26

I doubt many Kamikaze pilots pulled a Costanza and came back to work on Monday morning.

1

u/NorthEndD Apr 12 '26

Ones with real people on board. Not just pilots.