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Cape Town - Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) Cape Town International Airport
(CTIA) will activate a full scale Aerodrome Emergency exercise at 19:00 on Thursday 14 August.
The exercise will be conducted at night with an
approximate duration of 3 hours, Acsa said in a press release. Normal airport operations will not be affected during the exercise, which usually takes place twice a year.
The exercise, mandated by South African Aviation legislation as defined by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO will include various role-players
such as the NSRI, Maritime Search and Rescue, the City of Cape Town’s Disaster
Risk Management, the South African National Defence Force, Emergency Medical
Response (EMS), South African Police Services and Traffic police amongst
others.
“This is a full-scale exercise designed to thoroughly test
emergency procedures and responses and includes all the participants which
would be called upon in the event of a major aircraft incident at the airport. The main objective of this exercise is to evaluate the effectiveness of
the Aerodrome Emergency Management Plan," said Deidre Davids, Communications Manager: Cape Town International Airport.
“The
exercise will pay close attention to establishing better communication flow
between participants as well as testing command and control procedures.
“Ideally it should also highlight areas for improvement
in our emergency systems when dealing with a major aircraft incident,"said Davids.
Members of the public may notice emergency response vehicles make their way to the airport and see other emergency response related activities and should note that these are mock activities and that airport operations will not be affected.
This year’s emergency exercise scenario will involve a large aircraft
with 150 passengers which collides with a light aircraft. It will have 15
mock passengers on board. The large aircraft will crash-land at the airport
while the light aircraft will have an emergency ditching at sea, in the False
Bay area.
“An emergency response requires
co-operation between various role players. This is why it is critical that we
jointly test and rehearse our procedures on a regular basis,"said Davids.
In total there will be approximately 800 participants ranging from the
various role players and other volunteers who will ‘act’ as passengers, meeters
and greeters for the passengers on board, observers and so forth.
