Accident Review: Asiana Flight 214 Emergency Response

I recently wrote about emergency exercises and their role in improving your airport’s emergency plan. Exercises are not the only way to learn and to identify opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, from time to time, the aviation industry suffers an accident and emergency response agencies kick into action. Even though these emergencies might occur at an airport far, far away, they can still provide worthwhile lessons.

In some cases you might learn about plan deficiencies, equipment malfunctions and human errors through informal channels and industry connections. And in a few cases, there might be a formal investigation covering the emergency response to a major accident. The NSTB report into the Asiana Flight 214 crash is one such investigation.

Image credit: NTSB

Dan Parsons 12/9/19 Dan Parsons 12/9/19

Better Emergency Exercises: Purpose, Planning & Failing Willingly

It takes a great deal of work to plan and execute an airport emergency exercise. They require hundreds of people-hours to organise with meetings, discussions, working groups, control plans and reviews. Approvals go up and down multiple reporting lines and resources (people, equipment and money) are committed.

And yet, I think the hardest part of this process, it that it all leads to everyone, and especially the aerodrome operator, opening themselves up to critique. Each exercise should be designed to push the system and to result in some kind of failure. And after all that, we ask others to tell us what we did wrong and while we know that it is better to fail in an exercise, it is never easy to openly discuss your mistakes.

images credit: (cc) Brussels Airport (Flickr Account)