Massive mock drill takes place at Mumbai airport

Mumbai: In one of its major mock drills at the Mumbai airport, various security agencies on Thursday created an artificial emergency situation in which around 800 participations were recorded. The drill included ten famous hospitals of the city and also the Mumbai fire brigade and police who played a major role in evacuation of dummy passengers from a dummy aircraft that was made by Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL).

Officials from various airports were present to observe and point out the loopholes in the exercise practised to handle an emergency aircraft fire-landing situation.

The exercise began at 10.57 am and was concluded by 2 pm when the tail portion of the dummy flight XYZ 123 that took off from Hong Kong was set on fire assuming that the rare portion of the aircraft caught fire while landing. 161 ‘passengers’ and 10 ‘crewmembers’ were evacuated from the aircraft. However, eight casualties were declared by the chief medical officer of the airport, 33 ‘passengers with severe injuries’ were rushed to major hospitals nearby the airport areas, 48 of them ‘sustained minor injuries’ and were shifted to casualty area in the international terminal (T2), while 72 ‘passengers’ and 10 ‘crewmembers’ received no injuries.

The exercise involved state disaster management, CISF and city police for handling situation the also the local police for panchnama of the ‘dead’ passengers and allowed the bodies to be moved out of the airport. Customs and immigration helped in clearing all the passengers. And to prevent passports from burning, the MIAL fire system along with the state fire department doused the fire.  

“This is a major drill that is held every two years in which all stakeholders not only participate but also the top security personnel play a role of ‘observers’. The exercise was discussed in detail  in order to implement new operating procedures for a situation like this,” said an MIAL spokesperson.