By Tim Hepher, Giulia Segreti and Allison Lampert
TOULOUSE, France, August 7 (Reuters) - Deep inside the carcass of a disused turboprop aircraft, engineer Jonathan Beck squeezes between rows of tanks as he demonstrates how his French startup plans to challenge ageing Canadair water-bombers in combatting European wildfires.
From the birthplace of Concorde to the laptops of a retired general in southern France or an architect in Belgium, designs for new or converted water-bombers have gained momentum after nearly 500,000 hectares burned across Europe this year.
A parliamentary panel warned last year that France's existing fleet of aerial firefighters faced a "major crisis" and called for European alternatives to the rugged water-scooping Canadairs, which have dominated the market for decades.
At first glance, the task looks daunting. A water-scooper is partly a seaplane, the art of which has eroded over the years.
"We will have eight tons of water inside this aircraft," former Airbus engineer Beck, who heads design at Positive Aviation, told Reuters, pointing to Y-shaped pipes that would draw water from new floats designed to skim over lakes or sea.
The Toulouse-based startup is using the dismembered ATR-72 fuselage as an early demonstrator or testbed, and giving a new lease of life to the historic Hangar 16 that spawned Concorde.
A few miles away, Kepplair is receiving an ATR-72 to test its vision of a ground-loaded tanker to replace Canada's veteran Dash-8 on pre-emptive patrols to tackle initial outbreaks.
"It's the difference between an uncontrollable fire and one that is halted quickly," said Kepplair founder David Joubert.
Europe's last serious effort to match Canadair by Germany's Dornier and Italy's Aeritalia in the 1980s, Advanced Amphibious Aircraft (AAA), never left the drawing board due to cost.
"Western nations... have lost their skills in professional seaplane design since the 1950s or even World War Two," said former AAA project chief Elmar Welczek, a German professor widely seen as a leading expert in the mainly forgotten field of water flying.
Before they can quench a single flame, would-be water-bombers must scoop up significant amounts of capital to fund the R&D, certification tests and factories needed.
"What I think people under-estimate is the time to go from design to delivery," said John Boag, CEO of top private Canadair operator Avincis.
Estimates of development costs by entrepreneurs run from tens of millions for a simple conversion to $1 billion for a new plane and analysts warn that could go far higher.
CONVERTED OR NEW PLANES
Positive Aviation hopes to tap a market for converting second-hand planes and be ready for 2028, company president Laurent Schmitt said. It has a provisional order for 10 planes from U.S.-based Bridger Aerospace.
Kepplair is raising a new round of funding and aims to start deliveries next year, Joubert said.
At least three other firms are touting even bolder plans to design and build planes from scratch, while so far giving few details in public about their backers.
The most prominent so far is French startup HYNAERO, which announced Latecoere - a pioneer of early boat planes and now an aerostructures supplier - as a provisional partner last week.
It says its Fregate-F100 scooper plane would hold 10 tons of water and cost the same as a Canadair - roughly $80 million with support - but be twice as efficient in fighting fires.
In Italy, 19-01 Holding has been promoting since 2011 what it calls an integrated firefighting and emergency-response system centred on a new amphibious plane, WF-X.
CEO Renato Sacchetti said assembly would start in Italy from 2031. He added it would have entirely private funding worth €1.2 billion but declined to give details.
In Belgium, the amphibious Seagle is the brainchild of Gaetan du Four, an architect who aims to partner with industrial groups. He is candid about financial and industrial challenges.
"We are looking at the middle of next decade because we have to get funding. But I don't think any other (new) plane will fly before then," he told Reuters.
Startups must also compete with a new version of the Canadair, which resumed production this year subject to safety approval, after an 11-year gap.
Deliveries of the DHC-515 have been delayed three years to 2028, but owner De Havilland Canada argues alternatives carry more risk. "It's a lot of years and a lot of engineering," said Neil Sweeney, its corporate affairs vice-president.
Even so, Europe's aspiring water-bombers see a window of support as politicians debate firefighting capacity.
"What worries me is that in four weeks' time, nobody will talk about it, either media or politicians," Schmitt said.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Giulia Segreti in Rome, Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Alexander Smith)
