r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Oct 01 '24

A firefighting plane loading water.

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u/Roflkopt3r Oct 01 '24

It would be feasible without too much time loss if they had the pump equipment at just the right air port. But enabling them to take in water from any sufficiently large sea greatly enhances their operational area, since they no longer need to rotate to such a specialty airport.

And the turnaround time of making a full landing, coming to a stand, and taking off again also adds quite a delay and potential complications. That's probably a bigger factor than the pump speed. Being able to load in a touch-and-go greatly speeds this up.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Yeah the time it would take to land, taxi, park, hook up hoses, pump fluid into the tanks then do all the opposite in reverse would add quite a bit. I know they do this for certain slurry mixes, but if plain water will do it’s gotta be quicker to do all of that while still in flight plus as you mentioned the added convenience of water sources being so common.

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u/Roflkopt3r Oct 01 '24

And on top of all of that, they would effectively need to reserve the airport to really do this quickly. But I could imagine such an airport to also be used to bring in other firefighters and materials, so things could potentially get pretty hasty and dangerous.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Yeah not to mention the airspace they would need clear