Today seven team members in three of our Team Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances, visited City Airport Manchester, fomerly known as Barton Aerodrome, to view the work of the Airport Fire and Rescue Service.
Airport Firefighters Iain Keogh and Mike Hodgkinson were our excellent hosts for the afternoon, and we began with a look around their Rescue One Toyota HiLux Rapid Response fire vehicle, one of two at the airport.
Air Traffic Control and City Airport Rescue 1
We then had a tour of the Airport Control Tower and on duty controllers Steve and Mark explained to us the various ATC procedures in place at the Airport, including mention of the based GMP Air Support Unit helicopter ’India 99’ and NWAA helicopter ’Helimed 72’
Air Traffic Control
Helimed 72 returning from a job….
Iain and Mike then gave us a tour of one of the hangers and talked through safety procedures around light aircraft should we be involved in dealing with a crashed aircraft.
Of particular interest was infromation on aircraft ballistic recovery systems, essentailly a parachute fitted to certain catagories of aircraft particularly microlights, but so expensive as to still be fitted to only a small number of aircraft in the UK.
We were shown such a system as fitted to a based ’CT’ 3 Axis Microlight aircraft, complete with all glass cockpit instrumentation, which had team techie Dave Healey drooling.
Having dealt with a small number of light aircraft crashes upon our local moorlands, also including a helicopter crash, hot air balloons in distress and a hang glider crash, the team places much value on visits of this nature should we be called to an aircraft crash in the future.
Thanks to Iain, Mike, Steve and Mark for such a welcoming visit, and to Airport Firefighter Dave Pye for organising the visit.
Post Script – We had also hoped to visit Helimed 72 and introduce the crew to Mountain Rescue, alas as soon as they arrived back from a job, they were dispatched to another one ! .
Oh well at least Garry & Ged could have a little rest and catch some sun
Helimed 72 arriving back, before it get’s sent off again……l
