Established almost fifty years ago, Northwest Helicopters now offers a comprehensive range of aviation services, including charter, firefighting, and nearly all utility operations, aerial filming, maintenance, refurbishment, parts, and component overhauls. A relatively recent development has been the addition of a growing fleet of Black Hawks to the company’s fleet, primarily for firefighting purposes.

A Proven Warrior

A well-established staple in many of the world’s militaries, the UH60 Black Hawk has seen service around the globe for decades. Older examples of the type are being steadily retired from the military and reassigned to various civilian roles, where the type’s strengths position it ahead of most other offerings in the utility and heavy-lift segments. Just as the older Black Hawks are seeing a new life, so too are many military pilots who leave the services and transition to a more family-friendly civilian career, where skills developed and honed during uniformed years are readily adapted to the most demanding of civil flying missions. Nowhere are the benefits of this transition more evident than at Washington State’s Northwest Helicopters.

 

Brian Metzler boasts a 12-year active-duty military background that included service with the US Army’s 10th Combat Aviation Brigade and the legendary 160th SOAR as an instructor pilot and maintenance test pilot flying Black Hawks. With a young family, he was looking for a better work/life balance and the opportunity to join Northwest on Black Hawks was an ideal fit, especially when the company already had other ex-military pilots known to Metzler on staff. Metzler has been flying with Northwest for about four years now and has amassed around 3,000hrs on the UH60, now going into his fifth fire season with the company. He arrived when the first of Northwest’s Black Hawks was entering its second season of service and he now oversees a great deal of Northwest’s Black Hawk program. He is a Part 135 check airman and instructor pilot on the type, responsible for flight and training records and ensuring the program runs appropriately, efficiently and correctly.

Northwest Experience

Northwest has a long history of operating, refurbishing and supplying the venerable UH1 ‘Huey’ series aircraft, but that aging type’s dominance in the medium-heavy utility sector is rapidly being usurped by the growing number of ex-military UH60 Black Hawks entering civilian service. Metzler admits to having a soft spot for the UH60 and remarked, “It’s stable and super-forgiving, although when it does bite you, it bites hard. I speculate that it seems to be the way the industry is going. The Black Hawk is a great platform for external lift and for fires. It has redundant systems, three hydraulic systems, twin engines, great lifting capacity, it's fast, and with its 11ft tail rotor, you don’t have to worry about LTE as much – certainly not at the weights and altitudes we fly at. The Huey is getting phased out and now the army is releasing a lot of its older Black Hawks onto the open market.”

Scott Flux spent four years as a Black Hawk instructor pilot in the US Army and he joined Northwest when they were first looking at utilizing Black Hawks in the utility role. Prior to that, the Black Hawk had been used primarily for movie work, and the existing pilots were not particularly current on the type, so his instructor background was a real benefit to the company. “The Black Hawk is an impressive machine that will do everything you ask it to do, but when things go wrong, they typically snowball quickly, and it’s a machine that will bite you if you’re not careful,” he stressed, echoing Metzler’s comments. I had no idea what to expect, moving from the military to a civilian operator, so I pretty much threw myself into everything I could, trying to get as much knowledge, background and experience as possible. I spent that first summer of 2020 as a co-pilot, and that was the first year we ran the Black Hawk as a restricted platform on fires.”

Getting Schooled

When Metzler was only around three weeks into his first season with Northwest, he flew with Flux –the first prior-US Army pilot to join Northwest – and had about three hours’ notice to pack a bag and leave for Billings, Montana to join firefighting efforts for the US Forest Service the following day. “All the flying back then was with the buckets on 150ft longlines. I’d flown in the Army for twelve years and done all the tasks they conducted, so I thought it couldn’t be that difficult to fly a line but I was SiC for Scott that first season and the learning curve was just about straight up for both of us. It was definitely humbling,” he recalled. “We were fighting a big fire just south of Billings, and there were tankers, VLATs and LATs, and we were in a daisy-chain behind an older, highly experienced guy in a Huey, and he was so fast! It was frantic and incredible, but I was hooked right away, and now I look forward to fire season every year,” he related.

 

Metzler trained for flying on fires in the JetRanger with a short line, getting tips on the radio from the guys on the ground. He said it took him about ten hours before it started to really ‘click’. “Then, when I did my first longline in the Hawk, it was amazing. It’s so stable with all its systems,” he remarked. Firefighting tanks were introduced for the first time in last year’s fire season. They give the Black Hawks a much higher Vne, a real benefit when flying on fires in congested areas or populated areas.  “We can hang the snorkel and get across the state really fast, and it’s easier to deploy with than a bucket,” he advised. “We’d operated with a 660 or a 780-gallon bucket and with only two pilots on board, a 500lb empty powerfill bucket is a lot to manhandle around.”

Although he was initially not enthusiastic about the introduction of tanks as he enjoyed flying the longline, Metzler admitted that the tank eliminated many of the downsides to flying the bucket. “I’m only 5’8’’, so I have the seat all the way up and the pedals all the way in. You have to lean out so far to see the line past the landing gear and fairing that it’s really hard on the body, so I’d like a rib-rest of some sort rather than just an armrest. After my first eight-hour day with the tank, I was hooked. It’s easy on the body and refreshing to get down in the water.” He acknowledged that the tank necessitates getting lower to refill but pointed out that it can be filled from shallower and narrower water sources than those needed to dip and fill a bucket. “It’s a 1,000gal capacity, so when you get lower on fuel and can take a full tank, I think that you are putting more water on the fire. It’s better on the urban interface and I think it’s safer in poor visibility, where you can get lower than with a bucket.” Flux commented that he believes the tanked aircraft to be far more effective on brushfires and smaller fuels and even with full fuel, the Black Hawk can start with 800 gallons in the tank, easily carrying 1,000 as fuel burns off. Slower in the dip than the bucket, the tank is faster in transit; however, its greater capacity still means more water on the fire overall.

 

Production Line

According to Metzler, a regular flow of Black Hawks enters the company’s hangars, where the maintenance team strip them down to the bare bones, removes all the armour and installs a lift kit, radios and other equipment needed for the civilian role, then repaints the completed aircraft. “It’s a strong, powerful aircraft, and with everything stripped out, it’s at a much lighter weight,” he observed. Northwest currently has four working examples - all Alpha models - and three of them have the more powerful 701D engines fitted, while the other still has the original 700-series powerplants. “I assume that eventually we’re going to run out of 700 engines, so all of them will end up being fitted with the bigger 701s,” Metzler opined.

Evolution

Northwest’s firefighting operation has evolved and grown rapidly, as Flux pointed out. “Year one, we went from an organization that pretty much just ran type-2, single-pilot aircraft with one mechanic, when it was no big deal for three people to go home in the one pickup. Now though, you’re dealing with a Black Hawk that needs a crew of at least five people. There are two pilots, two mechanics, and a fuel truck driver. We used to have to get rental cars in every town, but now we have a huge workshop trailer that the mechanics tow, and it also transports a car for us to use.” The first two years used just one UH60, while the next two years had two on fires. Last year there were three active Black Hawks and now the fourth has entered service, with one more partially completed in the workshop hangar and a possible sixth still to come. “It’s been nothing but continuous progress, forward movement and development since I’ve been at Northwest,” stated Flux.

Metzler and Flux recalled that the roster during that first season was 12 days on and two days off, so when distant from home, it was impossible to travel in the time available, and they spent months away at a time. The roster now, however, is twelve on and twelve off, so the crews no longer need to stay away for such extended periods. “That’s a great improvement and it lets us have a decent work/life balance,” commented Flux.

 

Unusually for a large company, the Northwest Black Hawks have individual color schemes, all different but all equally striking and individually nicknamed, with Nemo, Merica, Barricade and Firetruck the four active machines. While basing locations have varied from time to time, they are in roughly the same areas to provide coverage across the state. One is currently based at Chewelah northwest of Spokane, one in Yakima and one in Richland, both further to the southwest.

Vets Support

For the last year or so, the company has conducted a program with Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) to familiarize military personnel on the verge of leaving the service with its employment opportunities and Metzler remarked, “It’s a huge win for them, a big win for us and a good relationship to have with JBLM. Then, in the summer we’re hiring part-time National Guard pilots, getting the younger W2s and brand-new PiCs that are rated in the Hawk. They’ve all been through flight school at Fort Rucker, so you know what you’re getting.” Prior-military pilots have been highly successful in transitioning to civilian flying with Northwest Helicopters and Metzler is only aware of one pilot who was unable to successfully adapt to the longlining mission, commenting, “Flying a longline is a unique task and no other mission or task replicates it. This is not a place to build time and get experience; it’s a graduate-level flying job,” he pointed out, explaining that the pilots are usually busy in the light ships if they’re not busy on the Black Hawks so time available for training is limited. “When we’re not on fires we’re doing a lot of HEC and longline work though, so that maintains proficiency for the bucket and the tank is pretty easy in comparison,” Flux added.

 

The US military is supportive of service personnel looking to transition to civilian life and supports the program that allows them to gain experience in the private sector while still receiving their standard military pay. This benefits both Northwest and the service personnel, allowing experienced military pilots to work as an unpaid intern at Northwest while ascertaining if the job is a good fit for them and if they are a good fit for the company. This program has been instrumental in filling all five of the Black Hawk pilot positions with highly experienced and skilled military pilots, as well as attracting several prior-military aircraft mechanics into the company. Positions are equally open to civilian applicants, but the skill level that Northwest requires of its pilots means that only the upper tier of highly experienced pilot applicants are likely to be successful and the company’s two full-time civilian pilots are not currently type-rated on the Black Hawk.

Like Home

Highly enthusiastic about aerial firefighting work and the company he works for, Metzler commented, “If you look at the Black Hawk side of our flight department, five of Northwest’s seven full-time line pilots are prior warrant officers who flew Black Hawks in the Army. When I come in to work, I’m hanging out with Army dudes so the brotherhood and background is there, but I don’t have to shave or put on a uniform. We deploy in teams of two pilots, two mechanics and a fuel-truck driver so you’re working in a small team of five all summer and a lot of the mechanics also have a prior military background, which is awesome. We have a good time, but when we work, we work. It’s full-on, 100 per cent committed to the mission, supporting the firefighters on the ground.”

Metzler described the usual training regime for incoming pilots. “We have a training program signed off by the FAA, just like any program that covers the basics like approaches, roll-on landings, emergency procedures. When someone starts out with us, we try to get them time as an SiC on fires because it’s usually the National Guard guys fighting the fires as active-duty service pilots usually don’t get the chance unless something out of the ordinary happens. We start them out in the light ships, get them reacquainted with the 206 because that’s like the TH67 and start their longline training.” The training then shifts to a longer 150ft line with just a hook, before moving on to a bucket and progressing to dipping and dropping repetitions from a dipper-dumpster. “Getting a prior-military pilot up and running in a Black Hawk is the easiest part, so it’s more about checking that they’re still a good stick-and-rudder pilot without all the technological systems helping out. Once you get onto working fires, it takes somewhere around ten to twenty hours before you feel good and confident,” he concluded. Flux added that most Northwest pilots attained their Forest Service carding at around twelve hours on fires and said that he only felt truly confident and competent after around fifty hours.

Flux commented, “I think Northwest has been really smart in how they’ve developed the program as a whole, who they’re hiring and it’s been cool to watch. We’ve had a bunch of Army guys who are very knowledgeable on the Black Hawks and all our mechanics are prior-military, experienced and qualified on the Black Hawk. I would put the amount of Black Hawk knowledge and flight experience in our organization up against any other operator in the industry.” He added that Northwest is also seeking military trained aviators to fill the SiC seats. Metzler summarized, “Putting in military-trained aviators mitigates a lot of risk. They put on that 12,000lb aircraft like wearing a backpack and have the emergency procedures ingrained in their blood.” Flying demanding, low-level sorties in busy airspace and varied terrain under smoky, turbulent conditions is a relatively familiar environment for military pilots, particularly those who served in the 160th. “The Cascades are steep and its almost like a miniature Afghanistan, with box canyons,” Metzler opined.

 

Metzler sees a very bright future for Northwest, citing continued growth for the Black Hawk fleet and the constant efforts of President/CEO Brian Reynolds to improve conditions for pilots and mechanics alike. An example is the summer-long block-booking of hotel rooms in regularly used locations so Northwest’s crews don’t have to race other crews to secure sometimes very limited overnighting facilities. “My thoughts are that we’re doing a really good job of getting our foot in the industry and making a pretty good reputation for ourselves. We’re doing some really good work with the Washington DNR, we’ve had a lot of structure fires and saved houses. Our pilots fly in this state all the time so we know it like the backs of our hands. It’s always fun to put warheads on foreheads and bring barrel-chested dudes with beards in to kill bad guys, but I think helping out Americans on American soil is even more satisfying,” he concluded.