Starting in 2025, the Honolulu Fire Department will fly a new twin-engine helicopter for incidents ranging from search and rescue to fighting wildfires not only on Oahu, but perhaps the other islands as well.

On Thursday, HFD unveiled its new Bell 429, joining three 1990s-era single-engine helicopters that firefighters have used for decades.

In addition to being a twin-engine aircraft, the Bell 429, worth more than $10.6 million, will fly faster and travel further — with a top speed of 170 mph and a flight range of 450 miles, according to the manufacturer — than HFD’s current trio of white and white helicopters. -yellow McDonnell Douglas 520N helicopters.

“This aircraft truly represents a long-term investment in our city and the safety and well-being of our community,” Fire Chief Sheldon K. Hao said during a news conference at the HFD hangar in Kalaeloa Airport in Kapolei. “I am truly delighted that this aircraft will become an immediate asset to our flight operations. »

Hao said the new helicopter – which will require advanced training for the HFD’s six full-time pilots – will be fully operational by June.

He said the aircraft’s “twin-engine capabilities will increase efficiency and capacity, which is essential for reaching remote areas, supporting firefighting efforts and conducting search and rescue operations.”

“This is not just a replacement, but a significant improvement to our current fleet,” Hao said. “Our plan is to slowly transition over time to just having a fleet of twin-engine helicopters, because it’s a much safer platform for our personnel to operate on and it’s just going to provide a better service to the community.”

Dustin Harris, HFD’s senior helicopter pilot, said the new Bell 429 is safer to fly because it has two engines.

“It’s essentially double the power, and it gives us a huge increase in the capacity and capabilities of the helicopter as well as a safety margin,” Harris said, emphasizing that in the event of a malfunction, the “helicopter can fly with only one engine” to ensure that flight crews and passengers can return to base safely.

And when both engines are running, the Bell 429 has a greater ability to lift objects, especially buckets filled with water that are used to fight wildfires from above.

“The more we can lift, the more water we can carry,” Harris said. “Water buckets for this helicopter will be 260 gallons per bucket, compared to the 96 gallon buckets we operate for the current fleet.

“So that’s almost three times the amount of water per drop,” he added. “And as you can imagine, if you put three times as much water on a fire in the same amount of time, it will have a huge impact on our ability to quickly control and manage wildfires.”

He added that the twin-engine helicopter design was also useful in search and rescue operations.

“It just gives us more power margins when we operate, especially in the mountainous areas of Oahu,” Harris said. “It’s actually a very difficult environment to operate helicopters because of the strong, changing winds and the way they interact with the mountains.”

Harris said he personally flew the new helicopter from Bell Textron Inc.’s plant in Piney Flats, Tenn., through several states – including over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado – to the region of Los Angeles, where the plane was loaded onto an ocean container. ship bound for Honolulu.

“A range of altitudes, different conditions, the controllability and the power that comes from the two engines and the tail rotor of the aircraft is truly incredible from a pilot’s point of view,” he said of the three-day trip to California. . “We were crossing the country at ground speeds close to 160 mph most of the time. »

Harris noted that the Bell 429 comes with a built-in rescue winch – a feature missing from the department’s current helicopters.

“The simplest way to put it is that it is a mechanical tool that will not only allow us to get rescuers down to the victims in the mountains or in the water, but to bring them back into the “helicopter,” Harris said.

He added that the new helicopter has a much larger cabin than those found inside an MD 520N.

“If you’ve seen us do rescues with the rest of our fleet, you might see a rescuer coming down a line, if you’re hiking on Koko Head or somewhere in the Koolaus, but when we take off, that person “It’s hanging under the plane, hanging on a rope, and they have to stay there,” he said. “We have no way of getting them back into the helicopter until we have a place. where to drop them off and land.”

“As you can imagine, it’s much safer to board a helicopter than to hang on a rope underneath,” Harris added.

The city budgeted $12 million to purchase the new Bell 429, but spent $10.6 million, according to Hao.

HFD spends about $2 million a year to maintain its aging helicopter fleet, he said.

Although Hao said getting the new helicopter from HFD took years, the addition of the Bell 429 follows the Maui wildfire disaster on Aug. 8, 2023.

It also comes on the heels of the Oahu wildfire, which sparked concern on West Oahu a year ago this week, in the rugged mountains east of Mililani Mauka.

In 2023, from October 30 to November 7, HFD battled a wildfire that started as a small reported brush fire.

That wildfire, which initially burned 300 acres but ultimately blackened nearly 1,700 acres of largely rugged and steep ridgelines, was deemed inaccessible to firefighters on the ground.

To fight this fire, HFD’s aeronautical program, consisting of three MD 520N helicopters – approaching the end of their useful life – was put to good use, a few days before the forest fire was extinguished by a wave of heavy rain.

But according to HFD Battalion Chief Robert Thurston, who leads the department’s air wing, it’s help from the Army, the Hawaii Air National Guard and the Forestry and Wildlife Division of the State, among others, which bombarded the fire from above with successive airborne drops of water. , which made it possible to contain the Mililani Mauka fire.

According to Hao, his department’s investigation into the origins of the Mililani Mauka fire is officially closed, although the cause of the fire remains “undetermined.”