New firefighting hangar at Spokane International Airport touted as investment in ‘the future of wildfire response for our state’

Standing in front of two shiny fire-fighting aircraft, officials on Thursday welcomed the opening of a massive new hangar near Spokane International Airport that will house the company that sends its crews to the places most everyone else flees.

The 100,000-square-foot hangar for Aero-Flite Inc. will finally give the company room to service the fleet of 13 airplanes that it owned this year. That fleet is expected to grow to 15 by the end of 2025.

The roughly $8.7 million hangar project is paid for primarily by Conair Group Inc., a Canadian aerospace company based in Abbotsford, B.C., that founded Aero-Flite in 1963.

Aero-Flite general manager Christopher Niemann noted that the company had 38 employees and four aircraft when it relocated to Spokane in 2015 from Arizona.

“When they moved, they were told they would get a new hangar. I think at some point, they stopped believing that we would actually build a hangar,” Niemann said. “It was a long road to get here.”

Niemann said the company flies several models, including the De Havilland Canada Q400AT, a modified version of the passenger aircraft better known as the Dash 8. He said Conair refurbishes the planes into tankers and can retrofit about four a year.

“We are adding airplanes,” he said, “because fire season is changing.”

Just this week, Aero-Flite had one of its tankers fighting the Franklin fires near Malibu, California, which had charred more than 4,000 acres and had burned several homes as of Wednesday.

Earlier this year, it sent five tankers in early March to help battle the Smokehouse Creek fire that burned more than 1 million acres in Texas, making it the biggest fire in that state’s history.

“The fire season is getting longer, which means we need to have aircraft available year-round to go out and fight fire,” Niemann said. “We need space to work on those aircraft. It takes roughly 45 to 60 days to get through winter maintenance.”

Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz praised the work that Aero-Flite does and private-public partnerships that are needed to fight the ever-growing threat of wildfires.

“Today is a big day not only for Aero-Flite but the people of Washington and for the future of wildfire response for our state,” Franz said.

She said she found a Christmas card from 1963 from Bert Cole, who had served as the Public Lands Commissioner at the time. The message was addressed to state workers.

Cole “lamented the devastating fires that ravaged Washington state. That year, the horrific fires burned 660 acres,” she said. “More than 1 million acres burned in 2015, and we tragically lost some firefighters.”

Both she and Niemann said that in past years, the fire season generally occurred between May and September, and companies like Aero-Flite responded when needed.

When Franz became the lands commissioner in 2017, the state only had access to eight Vietnam War-era helicopters to fight wildfires.

“We had zero dollars appropriated annually for wildfire protection, limited resources, limited time and limited support. Unfortunately, too often it takes a tragedy to wake people up about the urgency and the need,” she said, “which is what happened during Labor Day fire storm of 2020 when over 80 fires sparked in just 72 hours across central and Eastern Washington.”

Within 36 hours, some 500,000 acres burned, including the devastating fire that mostly destroyed Malden.

“I remember being on the phone that day, pleading for more air resources,” Franz said, as her voice cracked. “What we were told repeatedly was that we did not have enough value at risk.”

She said fires threatening homes in Oregon and California, which were raging at the same time, were given a higher priority for national resources.

“I vowed we would never do another fire season like that again,” Franz said. “So in 2021, we moved every contract we had with air resources to exclusive use … so we could be in charge of when and how and where we deployed air resources.”

That year, the state moved from 10 aircraft available and under its control to 35. Last year, the state had 44, including those from Aero-Flite, at its disposal.

“In Oregon this year, more than 2 million acres burned. But here in Washington, when we had roughly the same conditions and same number of fires, we were able to contain fires to 300,000 acres,” she said. “Washington has flipped the script.”

In 2024, Washington officials sent their available tankers to help fight fires in Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Texas.

The exclusive-use contracts also “help to ensure companies like Aero-Flite know what the demand and need is, and they can actually prepare and have the resources, supply and people,” she said.

Niemann, the general manager, agreed.

“Those contracts are what allow us to make the investment, to build airplanes, to hire folks, to build a hangar,” he said. “Without those partnerships, none of this would have been possible.”

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, who joined the dignitaries at the ribbon-cutting along with outgoing Spokane Airports CEO Larry Krauter, applauded the public-private arrangement with Aero-Flite.

“Although many of these things get reduced down to dollars and cents, it’s really human lives. It’s family legacies, it’s businesses, it’s heritage,” Brown said. “That is what we are protecting and defending.”

The contracts that ensure a company like Aero-Flite has a steady stream of revenue have cascading effects for the community, she said.

“To have these investments made here … it’s about workforce development, about deploying advanced technologies,” Brown said. “For all those reasons, the multiplied impact of this is going to be significant for our region.”