Air Tractor said last week that it has delivered its 5,000th aircraft, an AT-502B built at the company’s manufacturing facility in Olney, Texas. The aircraft, serial number 502B-3619, was purchased by Dorilino Prediger of Brazil through a dealer and will join three other Air Tractor aircraft at Prediger’s aerial application operation in Sorriso, Mato Grosso.
“This achievement reflects the people behind the aircraft — the employees who build them, the operators who depend on them, and the dealers who support customers worldwide,” Air Tractor President Jim Hirsch said. “What began with the radial-engine AT-300s and AT-301s has grown into a line of eight turboprop aircraft because customers have continued to place confidence in the airplanes and the company behind them.”
Air Tractor held a May 28 event at its Olney headquarters to commemorate the delivery, including remarks, a luncheon, facility tours and a group photo with the aircraft. Public officials, civic leaders, community representatives and executives from Pratt & Whitney Canada attended the event.
Air Tractor said the aircraft will be ferried from Texas to Brazil through stops including Cresson, Texas; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; St. George’s, Grenada; Manaus, Brazil; and Cuiabá, Brazil, before reaching Sorriso.
Many of them used in fighting forest fires.
But the government of BC Canada misuses them, supposed to be based widely to be close to emerging fires, instead sends gaggles of them to big fires which need big dumps to quench to stop embers being whirled ahead.
Too cheap to pay for big dumpers like the Martin Mars.