Mock crash exercise conducted at airport

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, DEC. 1. It was an exercise of a different kind conducted at the Chennai airport on Thursday by the officials of the International Airports Division of the Airports Authority of India (IAD-AAI).

Organised as part of the IAD-AAI's efforts to test the preparedness of the agencies at the Chennai airport, a full-scale mock aircraft crash exercise was conducted at 3-30 p.m.

As per the contingency plan for such situations, fire tenders of the city fire services, doctors and ambulances from all the major hospitals including Apollo, MIOT and Ramachandra hospitals participated.

The exercise lasted 32 minutes and all the `casualties' and `injured' passengers (as part of the unreal event) were sent to the respective hospitals, depending upon the seriousness of their `injuries'.

After the exercise, a de-briefing session was held and independent observers, posted at vantage points such as accident site, Air Traffic Control tower, apron control, fire control tower, casualty centre and airlines gave their observations and comments to all the agencies involved.

During the de-briefing session, it was observed that all the agencies concerned performed their role quite effectively, barring some minor discrepancies like the ambulances parked close to the `crashed' aircraft and some disturbances noticed in the RT communication. The first fire tender reported at the `crash' site within two minutes and 32 seconds. The chosen site was `runway 12 dumble', located at the remote end of the airport.

The Chennai Airport Director, Mr. Sudhir Kumar, said such a mock exercise conducted annually demonstrated the preparedness status of the airport staff attached to various ``operational agencies''.

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