Zimbabwe Plane Crash Only A Drill

A plane crash that was reported at Zimbabwe's Harare airport on Thursday was, in fact, just a drill, according to Reuters.

Originally, authorities reported the accident saying there were injuries but no deaths and that the flight had come from London. They back-tracked though, and an official told Reuters: "There was a drill. We have to test our preparedness and response capabilities every now and then."

"As we understand it, it's a drill, it isn't real, it hasn't really happened," a British Foreign Office spokeswoman told Reuters.

Air Zimbabwe is a member of the International Air Transport Association, which requires its members to carry out accident procedures every two years.

An aviation industry official in Zimbabwe told Reuters that the accident was indeed a drill, but there was no warning of the drill beforehand.

"A lot of airlines carry out emergency drills. Normally you would see a notification going out so that people are not surprised," the official said. "I am not aware of any notification this time. I have never seen it done in quite this way."

This happened in Kenya in 2006 when authorities reported the crash of a plane carrying 80 people. Emergency crews rushed to the scene only to find that it was also a dry run.

Comments

[LiberalsAreHot]

11:54 PM on 08/06/2010

I hope they didn't do it right before a plane from London was supposed to land that would have traumatized those passengers families for a while...

[KIVPossum]

02:56 AM on 08/06/2010

In a way I like the concept of an unannounced drill. When the hospital corporation I worked for scheduled a drill they would have weeks of meetings between nursing, transport, ER, the local ambulance services, and fire and police departments. Some departments would bring in extra staff for the 'drill'. They paid attention to traffic patterns and planned routes for all the service vehicles, so there would be no traffic jams, and gave no consideration to the inevitable news and gawker traffic that comes with a true disaster. So the 'drill' showed nothing about the TRUE ability to handle a disaster, instead it showed what good planning and preparation can do for response times.

[drjasonmd]

08:37 PM on 08/07/2010

I loved those in the Marines as well. Weeks of planning to be prepared for a surprise. Even more fun were the combat drills where we were briefed on exactly how the enemy was going to attack so that we could pre-plan the response.

Maybe a few of those are good to develop a plan, but still you need a surprise drill every once in a while to keep everyone honest.