Greece’s longstanding reliance on the Canadair CL-215 for aerial firefighting is a classic case of sturdy old equipment continuing to shoulder heavy seasonal demand. The CL-215 was the world’s first purpose built water scooper and it proved the concept that an amphibious aircraft could repeatedly refill from nearby water and make quick cycles on a wildfire. That legacy is not just history. For many Greek pilots and maintainers the CL-215 is still a familiar platform that does what it was designed to do, and it does it in places where other aircraft would struggle.
Operational reality, however, is blunt. The Hellenic Air Force has operated a fleet of CL-215s for decades and those airframes and their original radial engines are showing their age. Greece acquired its Canadairs in the 1970s and the type has been maintained on a shoestring engineering rhythm in order to be ready when the summer fire season arrives. Crews and technicians have kept them flying through meticulous work and many hours of field maintenance, but older aircraft need more inspections, more parts and more conservative operating limits. The Greek press and unit histories document that most of the airframes date back many years and that maintenance and logistics impose real constraints on availability.
From a pilot’s point of view the CL-215 is a handful in the best sense. It is robust and forgiving in water pick ups, but it is also less capable than later designs in raw performance, avionics and systems redundancy. The piston radial engines have character and they will keep you honest on a low level drop, but they do not match turboprops for reliability, climb performance and hot day operations. Those limits translate directly into operational risk in steep terrain and on hot summer afternoons when density altitude and turbulence are at their worst. Practical mitigation is rigorous training, strict crew pairing, conservative dispatch decisions and disciplined maintenance cycles. The aircraft can be safe in the hands of experienced crews, but safety margins are slimmer than they are in modern platforms.
Greece has lived with those margins for years and that has produced incident lessons worth noting. There are documented cases where crews carried out emergency landings or forced landings after engine issues while fighting fires, and air force statements and safety records reflect both successful crew survival and airframe write offs. Those events underline that an aging fleet increases the probability that missions will be interrupted by noncombat mechanical failures or by the need to ground aircraft for inspections. When you are fighting several large fires across a country of islands and mountains, every aircraft out of service reduces the margin for timely response.
If the CL-215 is the problem solver of the 1970s, the practical replacement conversation has two strands. First is aircraft capability. A modern purpose built scooper offers better avionics, greater payload, improved powerplants, and reduced maintenance hours per flight hour. These characteristics buy operational tempo and pilot workload reduction. Second is fleet resilience. A country does not need six more single purpose heroes if the maintenance baseline and crew training are not scaled up to match. Procurement must therefore be paired with logistics investments for spare parts, depot overhaul capability and a maintenance plan that keeps turnaround times short. On the capability side De Havilland Canada announced the launch of a modernized waterbomber program in March 2022 aimed at providing a next generation platform that builds on the CL-215/415 heritage. That kind of manufacturer commitment matters because it can restore production line support and provide modern avionics suites that reduce pilot workload in the drop environment.
There are also intermediate options to consider that are pragmatic and achievable on shorter timelines. Upgrades to avionics and to cockpit situational awareness packages on existing aerial tankers and CL-415 variants reduce the human factors risk without replacing the entire fleet. Conversion programs that swap piston radials for reliable turboprops have been done elsewhere to improve single engine performance and reduce maintenance hours. Those retrofits do not erase structural age, but they buy useful service life and improve safety margins while procurement proceeds. The industry has been working on such upgrades, including modern flight decks tailored to firefighting operators, which helps crews transition between older airframes and newer models with less friction.
From the operational commander perspective the priorities are simple and nonnegotiable. First increase mission-capable rates. That means dedicated funding for scheduled depot-level maintenance, predictable spare parts contracts and investment in the local maintenance workforce. Second standardize avionics and crew interfaces across types where possible. A common cockpit philosophy cuts training time and reduces error potential when crews swap between aircraft during long campaigns. Third build redundancy across platforms. Amphibious scoopers are magnificent when water sources are available nearby, but mix in rotor assets, fixed wing retardant tankers and contract aircraft to match geography and mission sets. This is not an either or choice. Redundancy and interoperability are force multipliers. Evidence from operators who manage mixed fleets shows that blended capability outperforms single type fleets when you account for maintenance and environmental constraints.
For pilots and maintainers the human factor is the bottom line. Modern platforms reduce fatigue with glass cockpits and improved ergonomics. Reduced maintenance tempo lowers the risk of rushed inspections. And better performance widens the envelope for safe operations on hot days and in mountainous terrain. Any acquisition program that ignores training, spares and depot work will deliver aircraft on paper but will not improve the day to day safety or availability that crews depend on. The sensible path is a combined program: acquire a measured number of modern scoopers or upgraded turboprop variants and fund a comprehensive maintenance and training pipeline so the whole system moves forward together.
In short, Greece benefits from the CL-215 legacy because those aircraft have proven the tactical value of scoop and dump operations in a maritime and mountainous firefighting environment. That legacy is also a warning. Aging radials and older airframes bring harder maintenance and narrower operating margins. For operational commanders, pilots and taxpayers the right program balances near term upgrades and maintenance funding with deliberate procurement of modern amphibious firefighting aircraft and commensurate investment in logistics and training. That approach buys safer operations and higher mission availability in the seasons ahead.