Airtanker company has history of fatal crashes

Saturday December 07, 2002

By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO (AP) Despite the problems faced by planes owned by Hawkins & Powers Aviation Inc., there has been no comprehensive review of the Greybull, Wyo.-based company's crash history until now.

Unlike commercial aircraft, no single registry logs accidents involving so-called public service aircraft. Any investigations that do happen are done by whichever federal or state agency contracted with the company, and the information isn't shared.

For instance, an Associated Press reporter found a single reference in a 1985 lawsuit to a June 8, 1979, crash in which two crewmen died when a wing separated from their C-119 Hawkins & Powers airtanker as it swooped down to drop fire retardant.

The crash appeared in no central databases; a hunch from an airtanker pilot ultimately led to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which confirmed the crash.

When crashes are logged with agencies like the National Transportation Safety Board or National Interagency Fire Center, they are cataloged by type of aircraft, not by owner.

``If you're looking for a list of which companies had crashes during which years, we don't have that,'' said Rose Davis of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. ``Our problems in the past have been with the model of the aircraft and not the operator.''

Aviation and safety experts with the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Interior Department's Office of Aircraft Services and the Associated Airtanker Pilots organization invariably said they knew of only a fraction of the Hawkins & Powers crashes.

On Friday, a special review panel was sharply critical of what it said was a disjointed national aerial firefighting program with oversight broken up among several land management and aviation safety agencies.

Hawkins & Powers co-owner Duane Powers defended the company's safety record.

``Our company has the highest safety record, even after the accidents this summer, of any aerial firefighting company in the United States,'' Powers said. Until this summer, ``we had not had an accident in 15 years.''

He would not provide his safety rate calculations, but said they were a rough extrapolation from what he called a flawed Forest Service safety report. Based on that extrapolation, he said Hawkins & Powers has an accident rate less than half the average for Forest Service contractors.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)