A Coulson 737 Fireliner fighting bush fires in Western Australia suffered an accident on 6 February. Coulson issued a statement saying that both pilots walked away from the accident. Local media report the pilots were evacuated to Ravensthorpe and evaluated for injuries. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has opened an investigation into the accident.
Flightradar24 data regarding N619SW
N619SW launched from Busselton at 07:32 UTC (15:32 local time) and flew east to its area of operations over Fitzgerald River National Park. The Fireliner arrived in the area at 8:08 UTC and made one descending orbit reaching a minimum reported altitude of 650 ft AMSL before beginning a second orbit. The second orbit also descended to 650 ft AMSL minimum altitude before ADS-B data reception ceased. Flightradar24 received the last ADS-B message from the aircraft at 08:13:41Z.422.
Download Flightadar24 data
The three data files below include the standard position interval CSV and KML files and the granular position interval data for the the final portion of the flight.
Aircraft information
This flight was operated by a Coulson Flying Tankers 737-300 Fireliner registered N619SW. The 737 was delivered new to Southwest Airlines in 1995 and acquired by Coulson in 2019. It entered fire fighting service in the United States after conversion in summer 2022. The 737 flew to Australia in December 2022 and has been active fighting bush fires since then.
Investigative reports
On 3 May 2023, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau issued its preliminary report. The report contains data from the flight data recorders as well as other pertinent sources and details the sequence of events leading up to the aircraft’s impact with terrain.