Operational Assessment of Heavy Air Tankers - Part 2: Maneuver Loads

A total of 5,316 flight data file collected by various P2V and P3A air tankers in actual operation over several seasons have been used to construct maneuver load exceedance plots. Flights have been divided into multiple phases, separating the segments when the retardant is dropped from others. For each flight phase, cumulative occurrences of maneuver loads have been examined and compared with data from other sources, when available. It is shown that the cumulative occurrences of maneuver load factor varies by flight phase, with the largest values associated with the drop and exit phases. For the overall flight, maneuver loads were shown to occur at lower frequencies than those stated in MIL 8866.