YLW stages emergency training exercise

Kelowna International Airport was the scene of an emergency today — but fortunately it was a simulated incident just for training.

The exercise scenario involved a Q400 aircraft encountering a bird strike shortly after takeoff from YLW, requiring the aircraft to return to the airport and make an emergency landing. The fictional flight experienced significant damage to the engine and crashed upon landing at YLW.

More than 20 agencies were involved in the mock emergency to practice major incident skills and find improvements to the agencies’ current response plans.

Flights at YLW were not impacted by the exercise.

“Simulating an emergency at the airport gives us the opportunity to test emergency response plans with business partners and the larger airport community in realistic conditions,” said Sam Samaddar, Airport Director, YLW. “We’ve had tremendous support from the community and today’s exercise demonstrates how first responders and support agencies can work together should an actual incident occur.”

The simulated aircraft wreckage was attended to by emergency responders. A triage area and family-and-friends zone was set up to simulate care and distribution of information needed during an emergency. A team of volunteers played injured victims, passengers, family members and journalists to simulate a realistic experience.

Large-scale emergency exercises are conducted every three years to test YLW’s Airport Emergency Plan, along with those of its emergency response partners.

YLW is Canada’s tenth busiest airport with over two million passengers last year.

It offers more than 70 daily non-stop commercial flights with 10 airline partners.