Firefighting craft to aid in emergencies

China has begun deploying large firefighting aircraft, giving fresh hardware to its emergency response and rescue system.

According to the Aviation Industry Corp of China, the nation's dominant aircraft manufacturer, two firefighting variants of the MA-60 jetliner were delivered recently to the Ministry of Emergency Management in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province.

The State-owned industry conglomerate said in a statement that the delivery marked the end of the absence of a Chinese large firefighting aircraft.

The new model, it added, will effectively boost the development of the country's aerial emergency response and rescue capability.

Designed and built by Xi'an Aircraft Industry, a subsidiary of AVIC, the MA-60 firefighting variant is capable of carrying 6 metric tons of water, or 28 people, each trip.

In addition to extinguishing fire, the plane can also perform command and control, communications relay, personnel deployment and cargo transport in emergency response tasks, according to its designers.

Design work of the MA-60 firefighting model started in June 2021 and took two years. It conducted its maiden flight in Xi'an in July 2023.

Its baseline model, the MA-60, is a turboprop-powered airliner that has been in service in several countries including China, Laos, Zambia and Sri Lanka since the early 2000s.

The new model of MA-60 is currently the only fixed-wing plane in China that can suppress fire, and will soon be joined by a larger partner, the AG600M, which is the fire-extinguishing variant of China's AG600 seaplane.

So far, four AG600M prototypes have been used in test flights and have carried out trial fire-extinguishing operations in typical blaze scenarios.

Project managers plan to gain the model's type certification this year.

After receiving type certification, civilian aircraft also need to gain production certification and airworthiness certification to make way for delivery.

In a typical firefighting operation, an AG600M will collect 12 tons of water from a lake or sea, which should take less than 20 seconds, and use it to douse fires over an area of about 4,000 square meters.