Ethiopian Airlines transports 200 firefighters from South Africa to Canada

A group of 200 firefighters and 15 managers departed Nelspruit (MQP, South Africa) headed to Alberta (YEG, Canada) onboard a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operated by Ethiopian Airlines. The outbound flight flew from Nelspruit to Lome in Togo, which took 5 hours and 48 minutes. The technical stop took 1 hour and 54 minutes. The aircraft continued its journey from Lome to Alberta, taking a total of 13 hours and 14 minutes to complete the last leg.

The South African team underwent intensive three-day refresher training at the Kishugu Training Academy in Mbombela, Mpumalanga before heading off to Canada where they are on a fire suppression mission in the province of Alberta, on a deployment expected to last for 35 days.

The request for urgent assistance came from the Canadian Inter-agency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) in terms of the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and South Africa. The MOU signed in 2019, provides for the exchange of wildland fire management resources. It was put in place following two earlier deployments to Canada to suppress wildfires in Alberta and Manitoba.

A second team comprising of 200 firefighters and 13 managers is expected to join the fire fighting efforts in about a week’s time, further strengthening the firefighting operations in Alberta.