Ready...or not?

Airline survival depends on being prepared for the worst.

As major air accidents have become less common, the focus on each one has become more intense.

Chris Statham from Blake Emergency Services, a UK-based organisation with international capabilities in the emergency preparedness and response arena, said: “Meeting grieving families, stressed officials, distressed airline executives and staff, as I have over the years following the loss of an aircraft, the challenge we all face is managing expectations. Matching the reality of what we face is often the greatest challenge.”

Statham said passengers think the airline will be able to respond immediately with resources and information whereas, in reality, the airline will have very little of either in the early critical phases of the response.

Naturally everything in the aftermath hinges on the capability of the local resources to respond on the ground and the capability of the senior crisis management team to manage the information vacuum while assembling and dispatching its resources.

A company like Blake may not be able to address the cause of the event at the time, but Statham believes in handling the event “we must do everything possible to mitigate the human consequences that have resulted from it”. 

Do environment and culture matter? It is impossible to put these issues to the side entirely, said Statham, but he added: “In my experience we are all united in the struggle to save life, look after the injured, deal respectfully with the dead and care for the families. A caring and compassionate approach to the response will offend few.  But this does not translate readily to the written word.”

Statham believes that writing an emergency response plan is, on the face of it, a relatively straightforward affair. There are many templates and guidelines, many examples to be adapted and modified.

However, he added: “Once the plan is written, many airlines psychologically sit back and avoid thinking too deeply about the reality of activation, setting up the senior management team, deploying individuals and or teams, preparing statements and briefings for the media.

“The tidy print on the pages, perhaps set out in International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit-compliant paragraphs and font sizes, do not in themselves convey the immensity of the event they seek to contain.” 

The compliances that are being demanded of airlines now are valuable because they make them focus on the plan and the training that goes with it. But Statham cuts to the chase: “The real trick, in my experience, is to watch the faces of the grief-stricken families, the injured survivor and the stressed executive that one sees on TV from time to time following any catastrophic event and ask yourself each time, does my plan and my training prepare me to meet that person? Have I done everything I can to make sure I am not going to add to their distress because I am not prepared at all levels to deal with them? They expect you to know what you are doing when the catastrophe hits – but do you?

“Emergency response is not just about the plan and the training – both of which are essential – but it is also about the emotional and intellectual commitment to get it right.”

Shivaji Ghosh, a former soldier with years of experience in crisis response, is emergency response planning officer at Oman Air.

Ghosh says he planned the complete emergency response strategy of the airline from scratch and also formulated the emergency response plan, family assistance programme and assisted outstations in the preparation of their local emergency response plans.

He also audits the crisis management measures in the outstations, conducts training and major emergency response exercises and establishes close liaison with regulatory and statutory authorities and with other international airlines. This gives a flavour of what such a position entails.

Ghosh has wide experience – both with IATA and response planning organisation specialist Kenyon. He took Oman Air through the relevant aspects of IATA’s IOSA (IATA Operational Safety Audit) programme, which covered all aspects of the airline’s emergency response system.

He said: “The issue of emergency response planning as a part of the safety management system has been given due importance by most of the major airlines in the Middle East region. Although none of the countries in this region has enacted any legislation making emergency planning or family assistance mandatory, the fact that many carriers are flying to destinations in the United States has compelled them to comply with the provisions of the US Family Assistance Laws Foreign Air Carriers 1997.”

Furthermore, said Ghosh, most carriers have realised that they may not be able to survive the aftermath of a major accident if the handling is perceived to have been unsatisfactory. The introduction of the IOSA added further impetus to the implementation of crisis management plans.

Meanwhile, he added, considerable amounts of money and resources have been invested in setting up elaborate emergency planning organisations, crisis management centres and in conducting exercises and training.

He continued: “Emergency response planning does face certain challenges in this region. While it would be normal for any airline to want to handle most aspects of the crisis, it is the national law enforcement agencies that would reign supreme in dictating the way the situation is handled. This may not always turn out in the carrier’s best interests, particularly where aspects like investigations and media management are concerned. It is, therefore, in the interests of the airlines that close co-operation be maintained with such agencies, and they be suitably educated regarding the peculiarities of civil aviation operations. Such co-operation should extend to joint training, workshops, seminars and regular exercises.”

The largest emergency response-planning organisation specialising in worldwide aviation is Kenyon International Emergency Services.

Kenyon’s name has become synonymous with helping airlines cope in the aftermath of incidents, especially where there are many fatalities – ever since it first handled the crash of a Junkers monoplane in England in 1929.

The company is based in Houston but also has a major set-up in the UK (these are its two main emergency operations centres), plus offices and facilities in Sydney, Hong Kong and Beirut.

It has been known to handle three major operations simultaneously; such is its network of resources on standby, and level of preparedness with its airline clients. According to Jerry Novosad, VP operations, these were a crash in Haiti, one in Libya, and then India.

Each one is complex in its own right, said Novosad. “It’s very complex because of multiple nationalities on board and multiple nations want to bring resources to assist. It becomes a very daunting task for an airline to cope.”

Of course, handling the aftermath can be distressing, so having personnel who have seen previous incidents means that they are prepared for the scenes of carnage that can greet those arriving at the scene.

After the main rescue effort to ensure any survivors are cared for, which is usually handled by local resources, the airline’s response team would be looking to preserve personal belongings before they deteriorate due to water or jet fuel contamination (including electronic devices). There is an increased focus on keeping families informed and doing the best possible to help them.

As Novosad pointed out: “It is important for families to take that one something back and it doesn’t really matter what that item is – as it could be the last thing they have.

“The most important thing from day one is to keep families informed. It’s important to inform them early if there won’t be any human remains, and to help them know how to have a memorial service in that situation.”

Such experiences continuously feed back into the planning process. Tom Garner, commercial service manager for the Eastern region, stresses the need to do pre-incident development. Kenyon has used web resources to help, with a comprehensive aviation emergency response training website. This includes material along the lines of those used in its classes with its airline and other clients – in line with its ‘12 Principles of Aviation Crisis Response’.

Kenyon is very active and often its staff, including owner Robert Jensen, deliver training seminars, such as the ‘12 Principles Workshop’ run in Jordan in December.

There is no legislation in the Middle East requiring airlines and airports to have emergency response plans in place. In Europe, however, an EU regulation has been enacted recently (it came into force in October 2010) which requires airlines to have a compliant plan in place, and introduces requirements in areas such as family assistance.

The Regulation (EU 996/2010) for the investigation and prevention of air accidents replaces the existing Directive 94/56/EC, adopted in 1994, which established the fundamental principles governing the investigation of civil aviation accidents and incidents.

It is hard to understate the importance of the new EU regulation, which will have wide-reaching implications – including in controversial areas such as the criminalisation of air accidents. These aspects are not the focus of this article but it should be said that European airlines have been observed to be slow in picking up on their new responsibilities.

It is important, too, for Middle East and other carriers in that it could ultimately set a new standard of preparation, investigation and care for those affected by accidents worldwide.

To meet this requirement for preparation, the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) is proposing airlines use the Emergency Response Preparedness Standards (ERPS) it developed in conjunction with Kenyon International.

It remains to be seen whether the European Parliament approves this, and whether it becomes a new benchmark for airline preparedness. In the meantime, ERPS may garner the support of the other airline associations and take on a life of its own. So the message to airlines in the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere is that accidents can happen, and although they are increasingly rare they are, for that very reason, increasingly potentially devastating to the affected carrier, increasingly controversial, and increasingly likely to attract an intensive media spotlight – not to mention years of costly litigation.