The bombers are on a 15-minute standby during days of high-fire danger.

Wodonga air attack supervisor David Brown said the planes were a vital first response tool.

“Their role is to quickly get to where a fire occurs and basically slow down that fire until the ground crews can get in there and fully extinguish it,” he said.

More than 50 firefighters, predominantly volunteers, from the Seymour, Wangaratta, Shepparton and Wodonga districts took part in the exercise at Wangaratta airfield.

One of the exercises included bomber reloading crews from Moyhu and South Wangaratta.

“So that all that pilot has to do is land at the airport, taxi up and those crews are trained to safely reload those aircraft,” Mr Brown said.

“Training like today is critical to maintaining a crew’s competence in air attacks.”

Mr Brown said the region was lucky to have experienced a relatively quiet few bushfire seasons but the fire risk had not abated.

“While it’s terrific and we would love every season to be quiet, we need to make sure we do this training so when we are called to arms we’re right to go,” he said.

The Airtractor flies at 300km/h and can carry 3200 litres of water or fire retardant.