Canadair CL-415 CL-415EAF

The CL-415EAF, for Enhanced Aerial Firefighter, is not a new airframe but a conversion programme. Offered by Viking Air after it acquired the type certificates of the CL-215, CL-215T and CL-415 in 2016, the kit allows owners of piston-engined CL-215s still in service to bring their aircraft up to the engine and avionics level of the CL-415 and the future CL-515. The French source is explicit on this point: the CL-415EAF is a modernisation of old Canadair CL-215s, and for that reason it does not count it among the 95 CL-415 airframes produced between 1993 and 2015; the Italian source, for its part, describes the three Moroccan aircraft acquired in 2021 as CL-215s upgraded to CL-415EAF standard.

The conversion replaces the piston engines with Pratt & Whitney turboprops and installs an EFIS avionics suite; according to the avionics section of the English-language source, the CL-415EAF carries the Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion, the same system fitted to older CL-415s that went through the AUP upgrade programme. The airframes are strengthened to raise the maximum take-off weight and receive new flight controls and new hydraulic and fuel systems. The result is an aircraft with the cockpit and performance of a CL-415 on a CL-215 structure.

In May 2018 Bridger Aerospace of Bozeman, Montana, became the launch customer for the CL-415EAF with a $204 million contract for up to six aircraft. The CL-215 source specifies that Viking had purchased eleven used aircraft to be modified and that the first was to be delivered to Bridger in the first quarter of 2020. The English and Spanish CL-415 sources also record the "CL-415EAF Superscooper" name for the six aircraft on order, due for delivery in April 2020; the Spanish source places the order in 2009 and the English one in 2019, a discrepancy that could not be resolved with the material available and which is noted here without adopting either date.

The conversions were carried out by two Viking Air subsidiaries, Longview Aviation Services (LAS) and Cascade Aerospace. The first CL-415EAF flew from Abbotsford, British Columbia, on 12 March 2020, with delivery to Bridger Aerospace scheduled for the following April. Viking announced plans to hire up to 150 employees to perform the conversions through a dedicated subsidiary.

On 21 June 2019 the Indonesian Ministry of Defense announced it was purchasing six CL-515s and one CL-415EAF for delivery in 2024; the Italian source confirms that the launch customer of the CL-515 was Indonesia in 2019, with six aircraft plus one CL-415EAF. In Morocco, the Royal Moroccan Air Force, which had received five CL-415Ts between 2011 and 2013, added in 2021 three further aircraft obtained by upgrading three CL-215s to CL-415EAF standard, according to the Italian source.

The CL-415EAF served as an industrial bridge. The CL-215 source describes the CL-515 as a relaunched production version "furnished with the CL-415EAF configuration": the conversion programme allowed Viking Air and its subsidiaries to mature the avionics, the re-engining and the structural strengthening that would later go into the new-build aircraft, while the orders needed to reopen the line were gathered. When De Havilland Canada officially launched the DHC-515 in March 2022, the EAF was already flying with Bridger in the United States and on its way to Indonesia and Morocco.