![[Airline Firefighting Homepage]](firtitle.gif)
Why? Because in Canada, we have one of the world's safest air transportation systems. Accident statistics prove that air travel is one of the safest ways to get to wherever you are going. For that fact, we can all be proud!
But what happens when we become the blip on the safety
graph? The anomally in the statistical norm? We then rely on the skill
sets of some very specialized persons to help us safely through the crisis.
Persons like our flight crew, the air traffic control system and the controllers
that operate it, but when the "sparks start to fly" we rely on the firefighters.
Unfortunately, in Canada these days, the role of the airport firefighter is not safe from the downsizing that seems to be the buzzword of the decade. In fact, out of the 750 certified airports and 6000+ aerodromes in Canada, there are only twenty-eight airports that are required, by law, to provide any aircraft firefighting capability at all! The rest of the country's airports are not required to provide fire protection even though they are served by scheduled, passenger airline service.
So which airports are the GOOD airports and which are the BAD airports? Here is a list taken from the Canadian Air Regulations (CARs) that designates the Canadian airports required to provide fire fighting services.
At
these twenty-eight airports, there is a requirement to provide a specific
level of fire protection based upon the size of aircraft using the airport
over an established period of time, and only if there are
a minimum number of arrivals of your size of aircraft within
that period of time. In other words, if you are flying into Prince George
on a Boeing 737 that services the airport once a day, it is likely that
the available equipment and/or manpower is completely inadequate to provide
fire suppression if some catastrophic event were to occur.
At airports which are served by the Regional or Connector airlines the situation is even worse. At some airports, fire fighters are just simply NOT THERE!! At some airports, they have a staffing requirement calling for a minimum of one firefighter and one fire-fighting vehicle. What do you suppose would happen if the one fire-fighting vehicle breaks down on its way to your crash? How about if it is just unable to reach you and becomes stuck in mud, snow or sand. Aircraft accidents DO NOT happen on runways all the time.
But
this time, we are lucky. Our one truck has managed to respond quickly (within
the required three minutes) and help is at hand. Or is it?
Under the present regulations, the mandate of the firefighters is NOT
to rescue you, but to provide you with an escape path, free of fire, from
the aircraft. How you get out of the aircraft is up to you and your flight
crew. The firefighters are NOT required to attempt to fight a fire
internal to the aircraft passenger cabin , although there is technology
available to do so. This same technology provides an added bonus of greatly
reducing the internal temperature of the aircraft fire and makes the event
much more survivable. But we don't have it this time.
So what can we do about this? The travelling public has
a right to know what level of safety their government is providing for
them. They have a right to know what level of risk their air carrier is
prepared to assume by flying
into and
out of airports that have a less than safe level of fire fighting capability.
The Canadian Air Regulations which regulate the airport fire fighters (among
other things), have been re-written. The Air Line Pilots' Association stands
firmly committed to lobbying intensively to raise not only the level of
fire fighting capability at Canadian Airports but to greatly expand the
scope of the provision of the service. The travelling public and the industry
must not allow any further reduction in the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting
(ARFF) service, in fact, it should be, must be, expanded to include ALL
airports that receive a scheduled passenger service.
The Honorable David Collenette, Minister of Transport
Tower C, Place de Ville
330 Sparks Street, 29th Floor,
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0N5 .
Download my presentation to the Air Passenger Safety Group- Powerpoint & .doc (zipped)
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Check
out the airports you fly into!!