Sonali Tiwary
Greece has taken a big step to fight wildfires. The country just bought eight new helicopters that can carry more water and fly both day and night. The deal, signed on April 30, 2025, costs €311.2 million.
These aren’t ordinary helicopters. Each Airbus H215 can drop 4,000 liters of water at once on a fire. They can fly for over two hours and travel up to 1,000 kilometers – far enough to reach any fire in Greece.
“This represents an important step in our efforts to mitigate the devastating consequences of the climate crisis in our country,” says Panagiotis Stampoulidis from Growthfund, Greece’s national investment fund.
What makes these helicopters special? They have smart autopilot systems that let them fight fires even in darkness. Each one can also carry 19 firefighters straight to where the fires are burning. Greece already has two similar helicopters with its Fire Brigade and twelve with its Air Force. These eight new ones will make their firefighting team much stronger.
The European Union is helping pay for these helicopters. They’re providing €77.8 million from its Recovery and Resilience Facility and €233.4 million from the European Regional Development Fund. Last summer alone, fires in Greece burned 100,000 acres of land. It took 18,000 firefighters to fight those blazes.
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Two experienced companies, Airtelis and SAF Hélicoptères, will operate these helicopters for the Greek government. They promise to have the helicopters ready to fly within 20 minutes of any fire alert, 95% of the time during fire season.
Bruno Even, who leads Airbus Helicopters, explains why this matters: “Wildfires have burned on average three to five million square kilometres globally in recent years with significant environmental consequences.”
Greece isn’t just buying helicopters – they’re also training people to use them. Sixteen pilots and sixteen mechanics will learn how to fly and maintain these machines. The helicopters will arrive over the next four years, giving Greece stronger tools to fight fires each year.
These helicopters have proven themselves reliable. The H215 model comes from a family of helicopters that have flown more than 6 million hours worldwide. They can use either hanging buckets or built-in tanks to carry water, letting them adapt to different types of fires.
This purchase means Greece won’t need to ask other European countries for help as often during fire seasons. Just last October, Greece needed three extra firefighting aircraft from other EU countries. With these new helicopters, they’ll be better equipped to handle fires on their own.
For Greek families living in areas where wildfires are common, these helicopters strengthen the country’s ability to protect communities through improved firefighting capabilities. They’re part of Greece’s larger “Aegis” National Program to better protect its people and land from wildfires.
