HYDERABAD: A full-scale night mock emergency exercise was carried out at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) here on Thursday night by using a real aircraft. The two-and-half-hour exercise involved more than 500 participants from multiple agencies and volunteers with different roles as designated.
The airport authorities said that the mock scenario involved an Airbus-320 type aircraft of IndiGo airlines, the partner airline in the exercise, which develops hydraulic problems and crashes on the runway while landing at the airport with passengers and crew on board.
The Air Traffic Controller immediately activated the crash alarm and declared ‘Crash Action’. Airport Rescue and Firefighting Services (ARFFS) immediately responded to the call and reached the crash site.
Meanwhile, after receiving the information, all the agencies concerned also reached the spot. The scenario depicted passengers with severe injuries, minor injuries and casualties.
The exercise focused on treating and shifting the passengers to hospitals based on their conditions, as well as making the area safe for operations. Such a scenario gave the entire rescue operations team a real time experience to meet with any eventualities and to study the preparedness of the airport during times of emergency in night time.
The basic idea was to analyse the preparedness of agencies who were involved during such accidents.
Other than IndiGo as the partner airline, Telangana State Police, Telangana Fire department, AAI, staff of RR district collector’s office, hospitals, ambulance services, Telangana State Disaster Response, immigration, customs, CISF, BCAS and other departments of GHIAL participated in the exercise to study the preparedness.
The mock emergency exercise started with full safety measures and concluded without any disruption and inconvenience to normal airport operations.
This full-scale emergency drill was carried out as per the ICCAO and DGCA guidelines to test the airport’s emergency preparedness.
Full- scale emergency mock exercises have to be conducted at all airports in the country once in every two years to test the efficiency of the contingency plans and to familiarise all agencies about their responsibilities in an emergency situation and to test their preparedness in such times.