Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Saturday conducted a "full scale airport emergency exercise-2019" at Jinnah International Airport (JIAP), Karachi. According to details, the purpose of this exercise was to test the response level of all the concerned agencies working at the airport in accordance with the Crisis & Emergency Response Plan (CERP) in case of any accident or incident.
An aircraft was acquired from Pakistan International Airline (PIA) for demonstration of emergency evacuation of passengers. In addition, concerned branches of CAA, PIA, local airlines, Edhi and Chippa ambulances have also actively participated in the exercise.
Talking to media, Imran Khan, airport manager CAA JIAP said that the authority conducted this exercise after every two years as per the standards of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that helped in ascertaining the capabilities and checking the response time of fire & rescue personnel.
He said that usually the standard response time of fire and rescue personnel towards such incidents is two minutes but it was a matter of satisfaction that response time of this exercise was one minute and seventeen seconds only. Meanwhile, Abbas Memon, Assistant Chief Security Officer, Airport Security Force (ASF) expressed his satisfaction on arrangements of the exercise; adding that ASF used to conduct such exercise after every two months to evaluate the capabilities of its personnel.
Needless to mention, fire vehicles of CAA reached at the fire site within one minute seventeen seconds (43 seconds earlier than the standard response time of 2 minutes) to extinguish the fire during the full scale exercise-2019, started late from the scheduled time. Similarly, rescue workers of CAA, Edhi and Chippa ambulances, doctors & paramedics reached at the aircraft quickly and demonstrated evacuation of passengers from the aircraft in a professional way.