To start with, watch this video.
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The US firefighting fleet is old. The Neptune is an old airplane. The US firefighting fleet has met with a number of crashes (link).
Pilots flying fire fighting missions face tremendous challenges. Invariably there’s a lot of crosswind, smoke and low altitudes. Just the sort of work that will wear out an airplane. In Canada and in the EU, they have modern fire fighting airplanes. Why can’t we get these in the USA?
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Most water bombers in the US are operated by private, for profit companies. This is not the case in many parts of the world, where fighting wildfires (including from the air) is entirely a government enterprise. As an American taxpayer, I’d much rather see US fires fought by companies which are competing for my tax dollars, even if they are saving money by using an old airplane. In my mind, this is much better than letting BLM bureaucrats spend my money on shiny new airplanes because they really don’t know any other way to “help”. Letting private companies fight the fires also means the bill is not ours when a spar snaps or the landing gear fails to extend.
Just think how cheap the job would be if there was no government interference at all. The schmucks flying the planes have only themselves to blame if the owner of the planes cheaps out and their plane splits in two.
Private companies have a long record of screwing the public out of their tax money. Remember the 2008 crash? It was caused exclusively by private companies having free rein…and it cost the government and the taxpayers trillions.
Privatization isn’t the cure for everything.