Crash course

Bangalore: The recent Air India Express Boeing 737-800 crash in Mangalore has come as a huge learning curve for the Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) officials and they are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to safety.
Though BIA boasts of state-of the-art equipment and trained fire fighters, the management put in place a 'progressive thought process' to capture the elements of the massive relief and rescue operations in Mangalore.
The BIA had sent a two-member team to Mangalore to get first-hand information on how the fire force and other units handled a crisis of such huge proportions. As a result, Dr K.J. Devasia, Senior Manager, Energy and Business Continuity Management, and Ajith Kumar, Chief Airport Fire Officer, interacted with fire, rescue and airport officials in Mangalore and collected inputs that will now get into the crisis-management lessons at BIA.
Marcel Hungerbuehler, President, BIAL, told Bangalore Mirror that BIA is well prepared to face any eventualities in the wake of an unfortunate incident. "We are well equipped with four Airfield Crash Fire Tenders imported from Rosenbauer, Austria, that can roll on any terrain to reach the crash spot at the earliest. The airport is also equipped with CAT-9 level of fire protection as per International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards. The Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFF) setup has been designed to meet the operational objective of the rescue and fire fighting services (RFF) to achieve the response time of less than two minutes to each end of the runway and not exceeding three minutes to any other location of the movement area in optimum visibility," Marcel said.
07/06/10 Anantha Krishnan M/Bangalore Mirror

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Categories: Airports Jun 2010, Safety Jun 2010