Spokane-based aerial firefighting company Aero-Flite Inc. plans to add more aircraft and employees next year, as a facility expansion nears completion.

“We moved here in 2015 into our current hangar with 38 employees and four airplanes,” says Chris Niemann, general manager of Aero-Flite. “Next year, we anticipate operating 15 airplanes with 240 employees.”

Aero-Flite currently has 13 operational aircraft. The two new aircraft the company plans to add early next year—both Dash 8-400 Airtankers—are considered among the most modern in the industry, Niemann says. They’re expected to be operating for the next 20 to 30 years.

When the Journal last reported on Aero-Flite in October 2023, the company had about 180 employees, including 125 based in the Spokane area.

Currently, the company has 218 employees, about 160 of whom are based here.

Aero-Flite also has a satellite hangar in Chico, California. Its Spokane headquarters are located at 8520 W. Electric Way, at Spokane International Airport.

The companywide growth comes as wildfires are happening more frequently, and wildfire seasons are lasting longer, Niemann explains.

“This year, we went out in February, and we actually have aircraft scheduled to be out until the end of December,” he says. “We are going to turn around and go out again in a couple months, which means the maintenance needs to get done faster.”

To make that happen, Aero-Flite elected to erect a new 36,400-square-foot maintenance hangar at its Spokane site. The facility is expected to open next week.

“They are just finishing construction now,” Niemann says.

The new hangar is being built next to Aero-Flite’s existing hangar. Once complete, the company will have nearly 70,000 square feet of hangar space on the airport property it leases.

The added space will speed up maintenance times, because less time will have to be spent shuffling aircraft around, Niemann says.

“We think we will significantly reduce that winter maintenance time, so the aircraft will be available for longer periods during the fire season,” he says.

Aero-Flite’s primary contracts are with the U.S. Forest Service and the state of Washington. The company operates nationwide.

In places like Texas, fire danger never drops to zero, Niemann says, so there’s a need for firefighting aircraft to be available all year.

“The industry was not poised to conduct year-round operations, and so we’ve worked hard to build that capability,” Niemann says.

Aero-Flite moved its headquarters to Spokane from Kingman, Arizona, about a decade ago.