Australian aerial firefighting pilot Alex Pay is spending his summer at a Greek airbase, ready to respond to wildfire calls within minutes. "When you get a fire call, you're gonna be airborne in 15 minutes," he told SBS News. "So there's not a lot of time for nerves."
Pay, 31, from the NSW Hunter Region, is part of a small but growing number of Australian private aerial firefighting companies based in Western Europe this fire season, which is shaping up to be the continent's worst on record. In the past week, two pilots were killed and hundreds of thousands forced to evacuate as wildfires raged.
The Fire Boss
Pay is a third-generation pilot with Pay's Air Service, based in the NSW Hunter Region. He pilots one of 14 aircraft his company has stationed in Greece this summer. It's his second season there, and the fifth for his company. "The biggest thing is that we don't try to take risks," he said.
He flies an Air Tractor AT-802, nicknamed the "Fire Boss", an amphibious aircraft that scoops water into a tank controlled by a computerised fire gate. In Australia, there were around 130 certified firefighting aeroplane operators or individual pilots, plus 186 helicopter operators in 2021, according to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
Andrew Mackay from Ballarat-based Field Air Group, which also has planes in Greece supporting Pay's, said pilots are just a tool for ground crews. "We like to say in our industry that it's not the aircraft that put out the fires, it's the ground crew — we're merely a tool to assist them," he told SBS News.
Pilots often work on either side of a fire to create a triangle or arrowhead, so the fire comes to a point where ground crews can extinguish it. Sometimes they drop water or retardant directly onto threatened houses. "We spent a lot of time training and preparing scenarios that give us a good education on what we might see on the fire ground," Pay said.
Risks and Accidents
Despite safety procedures, accidents happen. On Sunday, a Greek and a Danish national died when two helicopters collided while fighting a fire west of Athens. The helicopters were leased from Australian company McDermott Aviation, which said it was "deeply saddened" by the tragedy. In Australia, there were 32 aerial firefighting accidents between 2000 and 2023, causing six fatalities, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
Hotter and Drier Than Usual
In Bordeaux, where tens of thousands were evacuated in recent wildfires, Adelaide-based Aerotech Group has four aircraft, six pilots, and a ground crew. It's their fourth year there, and CEO Chris Boyd called it the "most intense" yet. "Basically, from the beginning of the season, it's been busy … It's been hotter and drier than usual, and they've still got a lot more of the fire season to go," Boyd said.
Like Pay's, Aerotech started in agricultural aviation but now does 80 per cent of its work in aerial firefighting across Australia, Europe, and Indonesia. "The need for firefighting isn't going away," Boyd said. He attributes the demand to intensifying fire seasons in Europe, which is warming faster than the global average. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Europe is warming by 0.56C per decade more than the global average, and last year 95 per cent of the continent saw above-average temperatures.
Urban sprawl is also a factor. "We have more people out in the rural interface in areas that once upon a time ... would have burned and not been a problem," Boyd said.
Happy to Be Here
Greg Mullins, former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, said aerial firefighting is a "useful tool" but faces challenges as climate change makes fires more unpredictable. "The textbooks are constantly being rewritten on fire behaviour," he said. Aircraft can only fly during the day and are grounded during pyro-convective storms, when fires are so intense they form storm clouds. "Every aircraft has to land because they are being knocked out of the sky," Mullins said.
Still, he said there's nothing like seeing an aircraft when you're fighting a fire on the ground. "When they come overhead, you go, 'Thank God!'" he said. Despite the challenges, Pay loves being in the air and the freedom it brings. This season, he brought his wife and six-month-old daughter to Greece, where his baby "is a hit" with locals, especially the older generation. "A lot of them would love her first word to be something Greek."
The community is welcoming, often bringing food and inviting pilots to barbecues. "When they realise what we're here to do, they're very appreciative and they're always coming up and saying thank you," Pay said. "We're just happy to be here."
