Europe’s water-bomber fleet faces a wildfire crisis

One million hectares went up in smoke in 2025, fire seasons now stretch across the whole year, and the water-bomber fleet has never been under such intense pressure. Europe is burning the candle at both ends.

In 2025, 1.03 million hectares of forest were destroyed by flames across the European Union. It was an all-time high since modern records began, and a perverse consequence of climate change, which is turning European summers into genuine furnaces. Spain lost almost 400,000 hectares, with Portugal and Romania not far behind. Even Sweden saw its burnt area rise by more than 120% above its recent baseline average. Wildfires are spreading, exactly as climate models had, unfortunately, predicted.

What was equally foreseeable was the intolerable weakness of Europe’s institutional response to this dramatic situation. A report commissioned by emergency aviation services operator Avincis was presented at the international aerial firefighting conference in Rome, and its findings are enough to drive anyone mad. Europe is not only unprepared to safeguard the forests it still has: worse still, all three causes identified in the report could have been avoided.

Global fleets are reaching breaking point

Aerial firefighting emerged in the 1950s, initially in the United States and Canada, using converted military aircraft. The first examples were Second World War B-17 bombers, stripped of their bombs and loaded with fire retardant. France did not adopt the approach until 1963, following a recommendation from Jean-Émile Vié, Marseille’s deputy prefect, who believed Canadian methods could be used in Provençal forests.

Six decades on, firefighting aircraft have evolved, but they remain bound by the same economic constraint. They cost a vast amount to manufacture, so leaving them on the ground when there are no fires to fight is not viable; they have to be used as intensively as possible.

That requirement gave rise to the system of moving aircraft between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. As early as 1986–1987, Canadian operators such as Conair were already arranging initial transfers between Australia and North America in line with the seasons. When it is summer in Europe and North America, Australia is in winter, and the reverse is also true. Aircraft could therefore be deployed according to the requirements of each geographical area. That model is now under serious threat.

Climate disruption has extended fire seasons worldwide to such an extent that the transfer window between the two hemispheres - only a few weeks long - is narrowing a little more every year. In Australia, fires can rage until May; in Europe, they may start in April; while in the United States, major blazes have already broken out in December and January, including those in Los Angeles last year.

Australia, Europe and North America are therefore competing for the same aircraft at the same time. “The window for moving aircraft from one hemisphere to the other is shrinking, mechanically reducing the available global fleet,” says John Boag, Avincis’s chief executive. The trend had already been outlined in the IPCC’s first reports in the early 2000s, which forecast worsening wildfire risks: what, exactly, were governments doing in the meantime?

Water-bomber aircraft do not grow on trees

With global fleets under mounting strain, the obvious response would be to build more aircraft. The European Union eventually came to that conclusion: in 2024, it released €600 million to purchase twelve DHC-515s, the De Havilland Canada-built successor to the Canadair CL-415. Presented at the Farnborough Airshow in August 2022 as the long-awaited answer to renewing Europe’s ageing fleet, the aircraft comes with one major problem: deliveries are scheduled between 2027 and 2030. Impeccable timing, isn’t it?

A water bomber is an exceptionally complex aircraft to develop, while flight certification can take years, so the production line must operate with Swiss-watch precision. De Havilland Canada, the leading Western manufacturer of heavy amphibious firefighting aircraft, is now overwhelmed by orders it cannot fulfil in time. Its chief executive, Brian Chafe, addressed the issue in the Avincis report: “We are trying to open a second production line, but government bureaucracies are extremely slow. And this is not unique to our aircraft: it applies to any firefighting equipment.”

As a reminder, the CL-415 first flew in 1993, and Europe only began considering a replacement 30 years later. It cannot exactly be accused of rushing.

The pilot shortage Brussels allowed to deepen

These water bombers still need pilots, and here Europe begins with a disadvantage largely of its own making. In the United States and Australia, aerial firefighting has long been a structured profession, with dedicated schools and a culture of aerial wildfire response dating back to the 1950s. A foreign pilot seeking to work there only needs to pass one or two validation examinations.

According to Reuters, however, a foreign pilot who wants to work in the European Union must pass more than a dozen examinations to obtain a licence from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), compared with one or two in the United States or Australia.

As though fires on European soil were somehow more difficult to fight than those in the Australian bush or California’s mountains. Those are the rules, and in Europe, rules are not debated, even when the continent’s most valuable ecosystems are under threat.

At the moment they are needed most, we are consequently facing a pilot shortage - another entirely predictable outcome. Experienced Australian and American pilots, trained on the very same aircraft, are blocked because they have not completed EASA’s twelve examinations. It is completely upside down.

The overall picture is hardly encouraging when these three factors are considered together, and none of them suggests anything genuinely positive for the years ahead. There is, nevertheless, one small source of hope: a French start-up called Hyanero, backed by Airbus and fresh from a record €117 million fundraising round, is currently developing a next-generation water bomber (see the X post above). The aircraft, however, will not take flight until 2031. That means waiting five years without any certainty that the project will ever actually come to fruition, however much one might hope it does. Europe will have to make do with what it has: somewhat tired aircraft flying through increasingly difficult cycles to cover, above a continent that sets wildfire records every year while remaining the champion of administrative slowness.