Link is to article about Canada’s great need for firefighting aircraft.
Call me crazy… but 99% of the time wouldn’t a shared firefighting aircraft fleet shared between Australia and Canada or perhaps a European nation only be needed in one or the other place at any one given time of year??
For the helicopters you can put them on cargo ships and then it is cheap as heck.
For the fixed wing aircraft, I don’t know is two cross hemisphere flights a year really more carbon footprint than two identical fleets of highly expensive materially intensive aircraft?
I don’t know… maybe but I kind of doubt it since if I wanted to buy an airplane it would be much cheaper to buy it from the otherside of the world premade than attempt to build it myself… so?
I think it is an interesting question to ponder is what I am saying.
I didn’t even think of the helicopters, but yes, that transport is relatively easy. My experience is tangentially related to the fixed wing jet tankers.
I think that firefighting activity stresses airframes more than usual as well, so I was also estimating from that maintenance side.
I figure that it could be done, generally, but timelines would probably be tight and costs could escalate quickly, both financially and environmentally.
How long does a cargo ship take to get between Australia and Europe or the North American west coast? I imagine it’d be a few weeks at least to LA, and longer to, say, Piraeus or Marseille via the Suez Canal, during which you hope neither side needs those helicopters.
Sure but that doesn’t seem like a dealbreaker, definitely a drawback though.