Firefighting Planes: The 7 Types of Aircraft That Fight Wildfires, and How Much Each Drops

There are seven types of firefighting planes. Four drop retardant or water: single-engine airtankers (SEATs), large airtankers, very large airtankers and water scoopers. The other three never drop anything: smokejumper aircraft, lead planes and air attack planes.

The tankers are sorted by one measure, how many gallons they carry per load. The U.S. interagency standard runs from tankers of up to 799 gallons to very large airtankers of more than 6,000, and the largest one flying US fires today, the DC-10, carries 9,400 gallons (35,600 liters).

This guide covers each type, the real aircraft in it, what it carries as of October 2026, and the helicopters that work beside them.

How Firefighting Planes Are Classified

In the US, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) types every airtanker by tank capacity. Agencies use it to type and order airtankers, so it is the measure this guide uses.

Wildfire agencies use plainer names on top of the types. The NIFC calls tankers of 2,000 to 4,000 gallons large airtankers and the single-engine planes SEATs, and the two systems overlap rather than match one to one.

For the refueling kind, see our ranking of aerial refueling tanker aircraft by fuel load.

1. Single-Engine Airtankers (SEATs)

A SEAT is the smallest airtanker, carrying up to 800 gallons (3,000 liters) of retardant or water, according to the NIFC. The best known is the Air Tractor AT-802F.

Single engine does not mean Type 4. The 800-gallon AT-802F sits in Type 3 under the NWCG standard, and only smaller tankers such as the Thrush and the M18T fall into Type 4.

California’s version of the fast initial-attack tanker has two engines. CAL FIRE flies 23 Grumman S-2T airtankers, each carrying up to 1,200 gallons (4,500 liters) with a single pilot, which also puts them in Type 3.

2. Large Airtankers (LATs)

Large airtankers carry 2,000 to 4,000 gallons of retardant or water, according to the NIFC. They are smaller and more maneuverable than the very large airtankers, and the NIFC also calls them “Next Gen” airtankers.

Most of the NWCG’s examples are former airliners and military transports. It lists the BAe 146 and RJ85, the MD-87, the C-130 and the Boeing 737 as Type 1 tankers, and the Q400, CV-580 and P-3 Orion as Type 2.

Coulson Aviation’s Boeing 737 FireLiner, a converted ex-Southwest 737-300, carries 4,000 gallons (15,100 liters). With the tank empty it can also carry 63 passengers, so the same jet can move a fire crew.

Conair’s Dash 8-400AT carries 10,000 liters, about 2,640 gallons, and the company says it has converted 27 Dash 8-400s into airtankers. CAL FIRE’s HC-130H carries 4,000 gallons and a crew of three: captain, copilot and flight engineer.

The military’s surge tankers: MAFFS

When every commercial airtanker is already committed, the Forest Service can call on the U.S. Air Force. The Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) is a tank that rolls into a C-130 without structural changes and takes about two hours to load.

A MAFFS unit empties 3,000 gallons, weighing 28,000 pounds (12,700 kg), in less than five seconds. The drop covers a strip a quarter of a mile (400 m) long and 60 feet (18 m) wide, and the plane can be refilled and airborne again in under 20 minutes.

There are eight MAFFS systems nationwide. The Air Force Reserve’s 302nd Airlift Wing in Colorado holds two, and the Air National Guard’s wings in Charlotte, North Carolina, Channel Islands, California, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, hold two each.

3. Very Large Airtankers (VLATs)

A very large airtanker carries more than 6,000 gallons, and the only example in the NWCG standard is the DC-10. 10 Tanker Air Carrier’s DC-10 air tankers carry 9,400 gallons in three belly tanks of 2,700, 4,000 and 2,700 gallons.

The company flies four of them, Tankers 910, 911, 912 and 914. VLATs drop from at least 250 feet above the treetops and must be escorted by a lead plane.

The fleet had a scare in late 2025. After a UPS MD-11F crashed on takeoff at Louisville on November 4, 2025, the FAA extended its emergency engine-pylon directive to the DC-10, which grounded the tankers, and 10 Tanker said in May 2026 that its DC-10s were cleared to fly fires again.

The aircraft’s specs live on our Boeing 747 SuperTanker page.

4. Water Scoopers

Water scoopers are amphibious planes that refill by skimming a lake, so they never fly back to base between drops. The NIFC says some hold up to 1,600 gallons and a tank can fill in as little as 12 seconds.

The classic scooper is the Canadair CL-415, which takes on 1,621 gallons (6,137 liters) in a run of about 1,350 feet (410 m) along the water at 70 knots. Ninety-five were built before production ended in October 2015.

The water source needs to be about 6.5 feet (2 m) deep and 300 feet (90 m) wide. Scoopers then drop from about 100 to 150 feet above the ground, low enough to hit the head of a fire precisely.

Repetition is the trick. In 2002 an Ontario CL-415 crew refilled 100 times in a single 4-hour mission and delivered 162,000 gallons of water, more than 17 DC-10 loads.

Smaller scoopers exist too: the Fire Boss, an AT-802F on floats, scoops 800 gallons in 15 seconds. The CL-415’s successor, the De Havilland DHC-515, carries 7,000 liters, about 1,850 gallons, and De Havilland plans its first delivery for 2028.

How Much Each Firefighting Plane Carries

Put side by side, the loads span a factor of 24, from the 800-gallon Fire Boss to the retired 19,200-gallon SuperTanker. The bigger number is not always the better tool: a scooper next to a lake can out-deliver a tanker flying an hour back to base for every load.

Most of what the tankers drop is retardant, not water. The Air Force describes its MAFFS slurry as 80 to 85 percent water and 10 to 15 percent ammonium sulfate, with a gelling agent and red coloring, while PHOS-CHEK, a common commercial retardant, is based on ammonium phosphate.

5. Smokejumper Aircraft

Smokejumper aircraft deliver firefighters, not retardant. Each carries eight to 10 smokejumpers and their initial gear, and drops them and their cargo by parachute onto fires that are hard to reach by road.

The usual platforms are twin turboprops: the Twin Otter, the CASA, the Dornier and the Sherpa. For Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management jumpers on square parachutes, the plane flies at 3,000 feet above the ground for the exit.

6. Lead Planes

A lead plane is a small twin-engine aircraft that scouts the drop zone and then flies the drop path ahead of the airtanker. It carries one pilot experienced in low flying over fires in mountains.

Lead planes are usually paired with large airtankers, which are less maneuverable, and must accompany VLATs and MAFFS aircraft. They mark the drop with white smoke so the tanker pilot knows where the retardant should go.

The Forest Service flew King Air 90s as lead planes until 2017, when it began a phased move to the King Air 200, and it contracts 15 King Airs for the mission. CAL FIRE uses the OV-10D Bronco as its aerial supervision lead plane.

7. Air Attack Planes

An air attack plane is the airborne control tower over a fire. It carries a pilot and an Air Tactical Group Supervisor (ATGS), who coordinates every aircraft over the fire and talks directly to the incident commander on the ground.

The crew finds the fire and its access points, scouts the whole incident and helps decide where the retardant goes. CAL FIRE flies the OV-10A in this role, with the pilot in front and the air attack supervisor in the back seat, and trains new supervisors in a King Air 200.

The two supervision jobs are merging. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service now combine the lead plane and air attack roles in one aircraft, called an aerial supervision module.

What About Firefighting Helicopters?

Helicopters are not airplanes, but they work the same fires and are typed the same way. Under the NWCG standard, a Type 1 helicopter carries 700 gallons and has 15 or more seats, a Type 2 carries 300 gallons, and a Type 3 carries 100 gallons.

They fill either a bucket slung underneath or an internal tank through a snorkel, dipping from lakes and reservoirs near the fire. A helitanker, the biggest class, has a fixed tank of at least 1,100 gallons.

Some Type 1 helicopters can also move up to 15 firefighters, and the standard names the CH-54 and the CH-47 Chinook as Type 1 examples.

Browse every type, including helicopters such as the Kamov Ka-32A, in our aerial firefighting aircraft database.