A MAJOR multi-agency operation unfolded at Newcastle Airport when more than 100 frontline workers tested their skills responding to mass casualty plane crash landing simulation.
The training exercise was inspired by real events in May when a King Air flight with three people on board pulled off a textbook wheels up landing at Williamtown.
The incident on Wednesday involved a plane with at least 22 people on board carrying out an emergency crash landing at the airport, north of Newcastle.
In the simulation, three people had died, five people had been seriously injured, 14 people were suffering shock, and two people reportedly went missing, sparking a search of nearby bushland.
The tarmac was awash with red and blue flashing lights as Port Stephens Hunter police officers, firefighters from the Rural Fire Service and NSW Ambulance paramedics participated in the exercise.
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), State Emergency Service, Red Cross, state government welfare service WelFAC, Hunter New England Health, airport staff and role players were also involved.
The major operation took weeks to pull together and plan, through the Port Stephens Local Emergency Management Committee, with a significant amount of moving parts to coordinate.
"That had its genesis in the recent wheels up landing of the King Air that occurred some months ago," Port Stephens Hunter police Superintendent Wayne Humphrey said.
"There were some learnings out of that, that we wanted to test.
"It's a rigorous set of conditions for the airport to operate and of course exercising these types of situations is very important."
In the event that was simulated on August 21, a plane bound for Williamtown was seriously compromised in unexpected turbulence.
There was an unexpected fire within the cabin from a fractured laptop to deal with.
The operation, carried out on two mini-buses with a wing area taped off, carried right through from the initial calls for help to the registration, finding and reuniting of people that were injured or killed through the Red Cross process.
In the King Air incident, emergency services on the ground had about one-and-a-half hours to prepare for the belly landing, after the plane called in its technical difficulty then circled to burn off fuel.
Superintendent Humphrey said that situation was replicated for the training.
"It was a flight from a destination to Williamtown, that gave us 90 minutes to mobilise. So it wasn't a surprise," he said.
He said it gave police time to stand up resources in a holding area and put in place Red Cross and WelFAC facilities at the airport.
"We'll debrief it and have a look what needs to be done, particularly around looking after next of kin, friends and relatives, and how they are reunited with the survivors from the aircraft incident," he said.
"At this early stage, I'm very happy with the result, but the formal debrief in about a month's time will let us know just how successful we were and what other learnings we've got and our strategies to implement."
Superintendent Humphrey and Shane de Wit, executive manager of aviation at Newcastle Airport, thanked all emergency services involved.
"These emergency exercises are something we do regularly ... [it] went really well," Mr de Wit said.
"We work closely with the emergency services, with the RAAF and it's been a great opportunity to continue to do that."
