A Singapore engineering company, ST Engineering, is converting a retired Boeing 757 into a sort of flying fire truck, ready to deliver thousands of gallons of fire retardant over a burning wildfire. It's a first for the 757, but not for other former passenger jets.
When the first conversion is completed in early 2024, it will join the fleet of a company called Galactic Holdings that owns a fleet of fire tankers that can drop their loads over mile-long stretches of a fire in about eight seconds.
The work involves some obvious items—remove the seats, plug the windows— and some less obvious, such as reinforcing the floor after carving out channels to release the load through two doors cut in the belly of the plane, one forward and one aft.
At 7,000 gallons, the 757 won't be the biggest tanker; Galactic's converted DC10s can hold 9,400 gallons and recently retired 747 fire tankers held 19,200. The 757's advantage is that it's much more economical to operate and can operate in areas that don't have the longer runways required for the others. Galactic expects to add 10 to 15 757s to its fleet.
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