I heard that the crew pretty much just sit around on standby for a call that rarely comes. But, any first hand knowledge would be interesting.
"Converted Jetliners Readied To Clear Oil Slicks
For decades, the job of aerial spraying dispersant onto oil spills at sea has been assigned to slow piston-engine or turboprop cargo aircraft.
Dispersant spraying is seen by the oil industry as one of the most effective ways of stopping oil slicks from washing up on beaches, harming wildlife and otherwise having a negative impact on the environment.
But now a U.K.-based team is introducing jet-powered freighters converted to spray aircraft to reduce response times, increase range and reach oil spills almost anywhere in the world.
Oil Spill Response Ltd. (OSRL), a cooperative formed by the oil industry to respond to oil spill incidents, has teamed with British aeroengineering firm T2 Aviation—part of the 2Excel Aviation group—to deliver two modified ex-FedEx Boeing 727-200s fitted with internal tanks, pumps and a spray bar to deliver dispersant liquid, the first time a pure jet has been used for such a purpose.
T2 Aviation and OSRL have found the Boeing 727 to be ideal for oil dispersant operations, thanks to the type’s tri-jet configuration and high angle of attack at low-level. Credit: T2 Aviation
The first aircraft was activated at Doncaster Airport, England, on March 31 and is now ready to respond to incidents anywhere in the world at 4-hr. notice.
The unlikely new role for the 727 was prompted by the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in July 2010, when oil companies realized they needed to respond to such incidents more rapidly. Furthermore, aircraft types normally used for dispersant spraying, such as the L-382G Commercial Hercules, were becoming costlier to hire and their numbers were dwindling.
An industry white paper studying new aircraft options was written and studies began in 2012.
“We looked at a wide range of aircraft,” says OSRL CEO Robert Limb. “The 727 was a very good choice. At low level, it is quite overpowered; it flies at 15 deg. of Alpha [angle of attack], so when you are low-level and spraying, this protects the aircraft from bird strikes.
“If you lose an engine, it does not have much of an asymmetric effect; it could climb away quite readily,” says Limb.
Engineering work on the project began in 2013 with nods from regulators to use a roll-on/roll-off system of tanks and pumps that could be fitted into the cargo hold and connected to the spray bar. But as the system was undergoing its final set of flight trials in November 2013, T2 was struggling to get the system certified, Limb says.
It turns out that in March 2014, regulators had reexamined the plans, deciding the dispersant was a flammable liquid and needed to be treated as such. A wholesale redesign of the system was requested.
“They told us to look at the requirements for a tanking system [such as] on aerial refueling aircraft,” says Limb.
From April to October 2014, 2Excel and OSRL rewrote the certification standards for dispersant-spraying aircraft in conjunction with the authorities. The new regulations concluded that spray systems and dispersant storage systems must be double-skinned, able to survive accidents with forces up to 9g without spilling, and capable of being vented or drained through separate systems than those already on the aircraft."
Converted Jetliners Readied To Clear Oil Slicks | Commercial Aviation content from Aviation Week