Civil Aviation Authority Tests In Level Of Preparedness Under Emergency Conditions

Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to test its crisis and emergency preparedness level, along with those of all other concerned agencies working at Jinnah International Airport, conducted on Saturday its annual full scale airport emergency Exercise-2019

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Sep, 2019 ) :Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to test its crisis and emergency preparedness level, along with those of all other concerned agencies working at Jinnah International Airport, conducted on Saturday its annual full scale airport emergency Exercise-2019.

On the occasion all relevant stakeholders were actively engaged to assess their respective capacities in accordance to the Crisis and Emergency Response Plan (CERP) - this was in particular context of any accident / incident.

During the drill, conducted amidst a strong presence of media representatives, an aircraft of Pakistan International Airline was deployed for demonstration of emergency evacuation of passengers.

The Full Scale Exercise-2019 began at 1130 hours and besides the aircraft also engaged fire engines, ambulances and other supportive mechanism.

Fire vehicles of CAA reached at the fire site within one minutes seventeen second (43 seconds earlier than the standard response time of 2 minutes) to extinguish the fire.

Rescue workers of CAA, Edhi and Chipa ambulances, doctors & paramedics reached at the aircraft quickly and demonstrated evacuation of passengers from the aircraft in a professional way.

CAA Manager for Jinnah International Airport, Imran Khan in a detailed media briefing thanked the personnel associated with concerned branches of CAA, PIA, private airlines of the country, Edhi and Chipa Ambulance services for their active participation in the exercise.

He emphasized that the exercise is a regular feature of CAA and is conducted every two years as per International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards "It helps in ascertaining the capabilities and checking the response time of fire & rescue personnel," said Khan mentioning that usually the standard response time of fire and rescue personnel towards such incidents is two minutes.

"It is a matter of satisfaction that response time of today's exercise was one minute and seventeen seconds only," said the CAA's Manager for JIAP.

Assistant Chief Security Officer of Airport Security Force Abbas Memon also spoke on the occasion.