43 Million for the twin engine Viking Air CL-415 water bomber.
$400k transfer fee for 100 miles.
45 minutes to put out the fire
$150k pay.
Thank you for your service.
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Wow that is terrible. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised though, it’s another thing that doesn’t make sense in this game. Thanks for taking one for the team so we don’t have to go through it too. I was wondering how the pay would be since the plane is so expensive
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Combine this with the „scoop here“ bug and the nearly impossible takeoff from water when full… worst mission type around as it seems.
Unfortunately you really see how unfinished career mode is on every corner 
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These numbers makes sense actually.
You can’t expect a 1.5MS payout on one mission, this is closer to an annual benefice per aircraft in this case.
But, this also shows the need of a bank loan system ASAP.
Or some sort of state subvention for security company creation.
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Considering I made negative 400k, that loan ain’t getting paid back.
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You can cut the pickup off at half full, just like how you spawn.
As freelance I can also only put 1/4 tank of fuel in.
Oh that transfert fee is for every missions !!!
Oh well, that’s not gonna work indeed, better keep doing these mission as employee … 
Isn’t it realistic?
I doubt firefighting with a 43 Million aircraft is profitable in the real world in any way.
Same goes for Rescue missions.
When the marketplace releases I’ll be shocked if they don’t have a buy (with hard real cash) flight sim credits for flightsim career virtual cash. The indications are there already with hard to achieve without lots of virtual cash career things it would seem.
I don’t know why no one else is stating the obvious: That transfer fee is absurd. Nearly half a million to do a short hop? Let’s not talk about how expensive it actually is to move a CL-415 100 miles (surely the fuel to fly it is not 500K), let’s talk about how reasonable it is for a game to make transfer fees that expensive. The fires are so inconsistently located that I have given up on them. I could only find fires in Colorado for a while, and the time wasn’t worth the money then. Now the only fires I’ve found are in California and the cost of moving the plane isn’t worth it.
The entire firefighting mode is a gimmick for now due to the cost/payout structure unless you luck out and only find fire missions originating from one airport (which is how it should work, after all, firefighting aircraft don’t just cruise the world looking for fires, they are strategically stationed at attack/tanker bases.)
For folks saying it’s realistic… maybe… after all, Cal Fire for instance has invested $1 billion into firefighting. They don’t make a profit, they are a government agency. So either:
- Forego any realism and make firefighting missions more profitable by cutting fees and increasing payouts or (easy route)
- Make firefighting missions part of a career path that isn’t about earning money. You can access to bigger and better firefighting planes through XP and licenses/specializations, there is no currency. That would be more realistic, but might bother some people who want consistency throughout the career modes. Or…
- While I’m over here daydreaming, let me truly manage a firefighting agency. Make it so that I have to secure funding to build up my fleet, I can manage AI pilots meaningfully, and have to carefully make use of taxpayer money to keep my firefighting statistics within targets (for instance, Cal Fire has a 95% 10 acre or less burn statistic.) I don’t think this last idea would ever see the light of day in an official capacity though, it would require Asobo opening up the career tools for third party developers which they 100% should do anyway so that we can get a halfway decent career mode in general.
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CalFire’s op is amazing. Unfortunately the sim has a LONG way to go before it can come close to emulating what they do.
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I am but one man with an AzurPoly OV-10 Bronco and a dream 
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Most of the fires I’ve seen are in northern Florida / southern Georgia and Alabama
Totally. I think it’s great they’re doing the fire missions, but isn’t it mostly direct attack with water? I want to see it do indirect attack with the ATAC in the Bronco giving realistic orders.
Side note - I was watching them work a fire in real time a few months ago - it was about 10 miles from KGOO, which is a CalFire tanker base with 1 OV-10 and 2 S-2T. Those tankers hit it, came back and reloaded, and hit it again - all within 20 minutes of the fire starting. Unreal.
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Thanks for posting, you are the provider of the research I did today for this subject, I nearly wasted a ton of money but you did it so I don’t have to, it wasn’t all for nothing there, posts like this are true philanthropy
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