[tertiary01]

I guess it's getting to be like everything else... if we can't have 100% perfection, 100% of the time then we won't do it at all.

[discostu]

It's not a matter of 100% perfection, it's a matter of not sending up death traps. When these planes crash they're full of fuel, fuel that makes more fire, and they have an unfortunate tendency of not falling in the already burned area. What good are fire fighting airplanes that just start another fire? The big planes are too old and too beat up, fire fighting is really hard on these planes, eventually they had to be retired, better to do it now than after more crashes which we know WILL happen.