Trying To Reason With Wildfire Season

While wildfire TFRs dont usually come with the threat of a pair of F-16s, the red circles depicting wildfire TFRs pop up every summer on aviation charts like weeds. While they can and are created any time special flight operations need to be protected from typical civilian traffic, theyre especially pernicious in the western U.S. Staying safe should be simple, right? Just load the TFRs onto your moving map and skirt their boundaries, right? It isn't that simple: Skirting the boundary is perfectly legal but it may not provide much of a safety margin. In fact, skirting them actually could increase your risk. To truly reduce the flight safety risks related to wildfire TFRs, we need to understand their implications.

Mike Hart

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Wildfire Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) create highly hazardous airspace due to concentrated and diverse air traffic (including helicopters with buckets, retardant bombers, and smoke jumpers) operating often in reduced visibility, with significant activity extending to nearby firebases and transit corridors.
Pilots must obtain accurate, up-to-date TFR information from official sources like FSS, as third-party systems can be unreliable, and should avoid simply skirting TFR boundaries due to increased traffic and holding patterns in adjacent airspace.
Heightened awareness is critical, including anticipating active operations upon seeing a smoke column even without a published TFR, communicating with the fire boss when operating nearby, and being mindful of hazards like drones, rapid visibility changes from smoke, and unusual aircraft loads.

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If you flew much before September 2001, you may never have heard of a temporary flight restriction, or TFR. If you had, it’s likely you became familiar with them as they were created to provide a safer environment for firefighting aircraft operations. Since 2001, they’ve been known to pop up every time a sitting president left the White House for a fresh Danish, or went campaigning or golfing.

While wildfire TFRs don’t usually come with the threat of a pair of F-16s, the red circles depicting wildfire TFRs pop up every summer on aviation charts like weeds. While they can and are created any time special flight operations need to be protected from typical civilian traffic, they’re especially pernicious in the western U.S. Staying safe should be simple, right? Just load the TFRs onto your moving map and skirt their boundaries, right? It isn’t that simple: Skirting the boundary is perfectly legal but it may not provide much of a safety margin. In fact, skirting them actually could increase your risk. To truly reduce the flight safety risks related to wildfire TFRs, we need to understand their implications.