The authorities at the Calicut airport have begun the process to widen the perimeter road following an observation by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) that the narrow road posed problems during rescue operation after the Air India Express crash last August.
Airport Director R. Mahalingam said that the Department of Civil Engineering at the National Institute of Technology-Calicut (NIT-C) had already been tasked to prepare a report to widen the 10-km perimeter road which surrounds the airport. “The road has varying width on the uneven terrain. We hope to obtain the report within two months and begin the work,” he told The Hindu on Monday.
The AAIB, which probed the accident on August 7, said that the perimeter road is 4.9-m wide and it should be wide enough to facilitate quick movement of emergency vehicles. During the rescue operations, the narrow perimeter road got blocked with emergency vehicles, airport vehicles and taxis, leading to serious delays.
The perimeter road at the Calicut airport, its report said, was found to be narrow and had sharp turns. That largely affected the speed of the emergency vehicles, including airport crash fire tenders, and the overall response time during exigencies. This was also a recurring observation during mock emergency exercises as well as during Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) audits, the AAIB pointed out.
Incidentally in November 2019, the DGCA, during its surveillance, had made an observation that the road should be capable of supporting heavy firefighting vehicles in order to achieve the required response time with adequate safety. However, the observed deficiencies still existed on the date of the accident.
During a DGCA audit in May 2016, an airport crash fire tender met with an accident while trying to negotiate through the narrow perimeter road to demonstrate the emergency response time. Then also it commented that “the existing perimeter road is not capable of supporting heavy firefighting vehicles, the same should be strengthened and widened.”
In its report, the AAIB also said that all available means of transportation such as airport ambulances, taxis and even private vehicles were used for transporting the injured passengers to various hospitals and a large number of passengers were transferred to nearby hospitals even before the ambulances from the hospitals could reach the crash site.
