ISLAMABAD, April 1 An air crash staged at the city airport on Wednesday by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to test the readiness of its rescue agencies caused more amusement among the usual airport crowd than panic.

It was funny for the drill observers to see the passengers of the supposedly crashed Boeing-777 leisurely climbing down truck-mounted stairs when one expected them tumbling down the standard chutes.

Even funnier looked the rescuers carrying “injured” passengers down the stairs on their shoulders like sacks.
Official umpires must have been struck by the slackness and lack of coordination shown by the rescuers and their officials who displayed no or little sense of real emergency.

For the casual observer the drill, an annual exercise by the CAA, was in sharp contrast to the real or staged crash scenes and rescue operations seen in the movies and on live TV.

It was touching that CAA dedicated the Air-X09 drill to its two firefighters, Abid Ali and Rizwan, who laid down their lives fighting the fire that devastated Gakhar Plaza in Rawalpindi last year, but strange that the umpires were not allowed near the mock fire on Boeing-777 to judge the CAA's capacities.

After all the exercise was staged to demonstrate the agility and quick response expected of the CAA personnel in case of a major plane crash.

Airports are required to carry out a major accident exercise every year to test the efficacy of their emergency plans and to identify deficiencies in it.

Rescue officials involved in the Air-X09 lacked efficiency and communication and consumed extra-time in completing their given tasks, be it the response from the fire fighters or the paramedics' attention to fake victims.

The exercise started around 11am when a small-scale crash, resulting in a plane catching fire, was simulated on the runway.

The airport's own fire trucks were pressed into service and were joined by four CAA fire extinguishing vehicles.

A helicopter was also seen in action during the drill which lifted the Priority-1 (seriously injured) passengers from the spot. District administration officials and staff of different airlines witnessed the emergency drill from a distance.

Airport manager Ayaz Jadoon informed the journalists that any deficiencies detected will be addressed after the panel of umpires submit its report, probably after a week.