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Firefighting aircraft directory/United States/DC-10 Air Tanker/N522AX

Aircraft reference

N522AX

McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 Air Tanker · 10 Tanker Air Carrier

Air tankersUnited States
Photograph of N522AX

Bidgee · CC BY-SA 3.0 au · Wikimedia Commons

Identity

Mission
Air tankers
Registration
N522AX
Mode-S address
A69072
ICAO type
DC10
Model
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 Air Tanker
Manufacturer
McDonnell Douglas
Serial number
48315
Operator
10 Tanker Air Carrier
Country of registration
United States
Home base
Albuquerque, New Mexico · United States

About the DC-10 Air Tanker

Land-based air tanker

It loads water or retardant on the ground and attacks from a runway base. It can knock down flames with water or lay a retardant line ahead of the fire to slow its spread and support crews on the ground.

What this type can do

The converted DC-10-30 carries about 9,400 US gallons of retardant in an external belly tank. Its three jet engines move this very large payload rapidly over long distances, laying an extended retardant line before returning to an airport to reload.

This describes the type’s usual firefighting capability; it does not prove what this aircraft is carrying or doing now.

DC-10 Air Tanker

The DC-10 Air Tanker is a series of five air tankers converted by American joint technical venture 10 Tanker Air Carrier, which have been in service as aerial firefighting aircraft since 2006. The aircraft are converted McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30s used to fight wildfires. The turbofan-powered aircraft carries up to 9,400 US gallons of water or fire retardant in an exterior belly-mounted tank, the contents of which can be released in eight seconds. Four air tankers are currently in operation, all DC-10-30 aircraft, with the call-signs Tanker 910, 911, 912 and 914. The original Tanker 910, a DC-10-10, was retired in 2014.

ICAO type · DC10

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Flight history

Every sortie this server has recorded, reconstructed from the positions the volunteer ADS-B network heard. Select a row to isolate it on the map.

Reading the archive…

Photographs

Freely licensed images are stored with this project; the rest are shown from the site that publishes them.

  • Photograph of the aircraft

    Anthony Inswasty · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  • Photograph of the aircraft

    Björn Strey · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  • Photograph of the aircraft

    Björn Strey · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  • Photograph of the aircraft

    Björn Strey · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  • Photograph of the aircraft

    Bill Larkins · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  • Photograph of the aircraft

    Abdeyan · All rights reserved · Planespotters.net

Elsewhere

Live tracking & flight history

  • Flightradar24Commercial flight history, airport pairs and scheduled times.
  • ADS-B ExchangeUnfiltered live globe, including aircraft other trackers hide.
  • adsb.lolThe volunteer network this map reads its trajectories from.
  • FlightAwareRegistration record and recent activity.

Photography

  • JetPhotosScreened spotter photography, newest first.
  • Planespotters.netPhotographs alongside the production and delivery record.
  • Airliners.netLong-running photo archive, often the oldest images of a frame.
  • Wikimedia CommonsFreely licensed images — the ones this sheet is allowed to host.

Registries & airframe records

  • Airframes.orgAirframe history: serial number, operators, incidents.
  • adsbdbOpen registration database, in JSON.
  • hexdb.ioMode-S address record used by the tracking community, in JSON.

Type reference

  • ICAO type DC10ICAO Doc 8643 entry: designator, wake category, engines.
Reference data assembled on August 16, 2026 from adsbdb, hexdb.io, FAA Aircraft Registry, 10 Tanker Operation Coahuila report, CONAFOR national fire situation report, 2 April 2021, Wikimedia Commons, Planespotters. Run pnpm fetch:aircraft --refresh to rebuild it.