Rescue teams employ mock aircraft for drill

The Maritime Search and Rescue Center and three local government agencies jointly conducted a drill Wednesday to rescue 150 volunteers from a mock Boeing 757 floating on the Yangtze River estuary.

The purpose of the 40-minute drill, which simulated a crippled passenger jet that had to make an emergency water landing, was to improve emergency rescue agencies' response time and joint search-and-rescue capabilities. It was the first time rescue authorities have held this kind of drill in China.

Some 1,600 flights take off and land at Shanghai's two major airports each day, said Zhang Hao, director of the Regulatory Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration of Shanghai. "Such drills are quite necessary," he said at a press conference.

The back story for the drill was that a Shanghai-bound airliner's engines unexpectedly failed one after the other, forcing it to land in the estuary. The drill started with the mock jet in the water, smoke pouring from its tail, with 140 volunteer passengers and 10 crew members inside.

After receiving the rescue call, the local rescue and salvage bureau dispatched 20 types of salvage vessels and four helicopters to assist in the rescue, according to a press release from the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration, which participated in the drill.

The drill allowed search and rescue crews to practice seven areas of their field, including emergency response, personnel evacuation and self-rescue, and the rescue of people who had fallen overboard.

Considering possibilities such as an engine explosion or the aircraft sinking into the sea, rescue crews had to get the volunteers out as quickly as possible, Zhang said.

All of the people posing as crash victims were volunteers who had received training from China Eastern Airlines crew members, said Chen Xiaoguang, deputy director of the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration.

Ten crew members from China Eastern also helped evacuate volunteer passengers during the drill.

In the first seven months of the year, the Shanghai Maritime Search and Rescue Center coordinated 129 emergency rescues, involving 577 salvage vessels and 26 helicopters, according to Zhai Jiugang, duty office director of the China Maritime Search and Rescue Center.

The center coordinated searches for 88 distressed ships over the period, 67 of which were saved.