Concerted effort averts ‘flight landing crisis’

KOLKATA : On Friday, a controller at Kolkata airport’s ATC tower received a message from an incoming flight. The captain of the Boeing B 737-800 aircraft suspected a snag in the landing gear and radioed in. The controller immediately sent out an alert that intimated the fire team, health officials, CISF personnel, airline and ground handling agency staff, as well as police outside. Back at the ATC, the controller cleared the path for the flight to land. As the Air Jupiter flight AJA299 touched down on the secondary runway, the fire fighters stationed strategically saw the wheels skid on the tarmac. Realizing that the plane could veer out of control, the fire tenders gave hot pursuit, spraying foam at the landing gear to prevent the sparks from igniting a fire.


“With two hours of fuel still on board the plane, one cannot take a chance. A stray spark can turn the aircraft into a fire ball,” said a fire officer.

Luckily, the pilots were able to steer the plane to a halt. Realising that time was of essence should there be a fire, the cabin crew deployed chutes and passengers began to slide down. Airline staff and ground handling crew lent a helping hand. The medical team rushed in with first aid kits and body bags, quickly setting up an on-site camp to prioritise treatment. Those requiring hospitalisation were stretchered into ambulances while those with minor injuries were treated at the site. Thankfully, the body bags to transport the dead to the mortuary were not required. All the while, CISF jawans kept the area cordoned off.


In the terminal, airline officials and airport staff divided themselves into teams, one heading outside to assure anxious families of passengers who had flown in that the situation was under control. A helpline had already been set up. Another team got busy coordinating the retrieval of baggage from the stranded plane while a third group headed to the departure lounge to inform passengers booked on the next Air Jupiter flight that it would not take off after the incident.

“The airport responded to a fullblown incident. All agencies involved responded to the crisis,” airport director Atul Dikshit told TOI a day after the mock crisis scenario, created for a full-scale real-time drill involving nearly 150 people. “There are standard operating procedures (SOP) for incidents. The response of each agency was clocked. The report will be sent to DGCA for analysis,” said Dikshit. An airline bus served as a mock-up plane for the drill.

The exercise is crucial for correcting response time and preparedness of the airport and relevant agencies in times of air disasters. “Apart from keeping everyone is a condition to respond to an emergency, we have a chance to correct mistakes and improve the response time,” Dikshit said.