Croatia has recently signed a contract for the purchase of two Canadair DHC-515 firefighting planes produced by the North American manufacturer De Havilland Canada Aircraft. This is thanks to funding from the European Commission of 600 million euros which will be allocated, in addition to Zagreb, to France, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain, with the aim of strengthening the mechanism for fighting fires.

"The two planes will each cost around 50 million euros and will increase Croatia's firefighting fleet to eight planes", said Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic yesterday, interviewed by the national television broadcaster "HRT". The order will be finalized by the end of March 2024 and the two fixed-wing vehicles will be delivered in 2027.

The DHC-515 is a product of the Canadian manufacturer De Havilland Aircraft, which purchased the Canadair CL program in 2016. It is a latest generation version designed to replace the old firefighting fleets made up of the CL-215 and CL-415 variants. These are the characteristics of the DHC-515: the new turboprop engines allow lower fuel consumption (from -15% to -40%) and lower Co2 emissions (-50%), new avionics, faster tank filling (12 seconds), operational capacity doubled (almost 700,000 liters per day).

On the topic, see also the article published by AVIONEWS.