JET AIRWAYS RESPONSE TO THE BRUSSELS TERRORIST ATTACK

By

Colonel (Veteran) Shivaji Ranjan Ghosh

(First published in SAFETi, Jet Airways Safety Magazine Issue 2-2016

As the Jet Airways Emergency Response Management Team (ERMT) assembled in the Emergency Response Centre (ERC) on 22 March 2016, there was a strong feeling of déjà vu. Less than three weeks ago, on the 3rd of March, the team had gathered in the same room to tackle an emergency consequent to a gear collapse in Mumbai, and here they were once again, facing a far grimmer scenario, an unprecedented event that would, in the next 48 hours, test the response capabilities of the Company to the limits.

The event that triggered this situation was the terrorist attacks in Brussels, bomb blasts that killed several innocent people and injured many more in Brussels International Airport and the busy metro station at Maelbeek. It happened on a day when Jet Airways was in the process of winding up its operations in Brussels. And it happened at a time when Jet Airways had four aircraft on the ground, affecting some 700 passengers. It could not have happened at a worse moment. But this was no time for philosophical reflections, it was the time for a quick, decisive and competent response.

The event was unusual to the extreme, and there was no precedent to fall back upon. However, the lessons learned during the previous incident and also during a table top exercise conducted a few weeks ago would now stand the ERMT in good stead. The first lesson to get highlighted was the fact that effective emergency response will call for flexibility of mind and a high degree of adaptability to rapidly changing scenarios, coupled with the ability to quickly get to grips with the situation.

Following a quick assessment of the situation, the ERMT headed by the CEO and the Emergency Director homed on to the following priority tasks:

·       Care and management of the affected passengers and crew.

·       Care of the ground staff in Brussels airport

·       The safe return of the four aircraft.

·       Management of other passengers in North America, Europe and India, who would be affected by the disruption.

·       Implementation of the crisis communication plan, to include media statements/releases, social media and website management.

Even while these deliberations were going on, the impact of the social media was suddenly felt with telling effect. A photograph shot by Ketevan Kardava, a special correspondent for the Georgian Public Broadcaster network, appeared on Twitter and went viral worldwide within moments. The photograph, which has since come to be regarded as “an iconic image of the horror of Tuesday's terror attacks”, showed an injured and traumatized Jet Airways cabin crew member Nidhi Chaphekar in the immediate aftermath of the explosions.  This horrific image of “the lady in a yellow jacket” suddenly brought the reality of the event into sharp focus. Subsequent debates regarding the propriety of publishing such images proved to be futile, as it is evident that the speed and the reach of the social media will be difficult to contain.

Besides Nidhi, one more member of cabin crew Amit Motwani was also injured in the blasts. While the information of their injuries was conveyed to the ERC, the follow-up action proved to be a far greater challenge. Unlike drills and exercises where the triage and casualty evacuation processes are executed with clockwork efficiency, the real-life scenario was quite different. There were no records readily available to show the whereabouts of the casualties after they had been evacuated. It took several hours of frantic enquiries and running from pillar to post before they were finally located in two different hospitals in Antwerp.

The management of the passengers proved to be another herculean task, which was not made any simpler by the fact that different agencies were involved in the process. Unlike in exercise scenarios where the survivors are brought into the terminal building for care and comfort, in this case the continuing threat to the building ruled out the possibility of using it as a refuge area. There was no option available to the authorities but to evacuate the passengers from the aircrafts and move them to a hangar. With no baggage and only lightweight clothing, further exacerbated by the biting cold of the Brussels morning, the next few hours would prove to be a challenging period for the passengers. There was little the affected airlines could do to help, as the situation was handled by the local authorities.

Subsequently the passengers were moved to temporary accommodation in various locations in and near Brussels. Ideally, the passengers should have been accommodated in accordance with the aircraft loads i.e. all passengers scheduled to fly out in a specific flight should have been kept in one camp. Unfortunately, presumably due to logistical and security reasons, this was not done and the loads were mixed. Consequently, locating and accounting for all passengers proved to be a nightmare for the already hard-pressed staff. The situation was further complicated by the fact that many transit passengers did not have Schengen visas, and a very large number of them had left their travel documents in their cabin baggage in the aircraft at the time of evacuation.

To make things worse, the communication channels were also severely affected by the attack, leading to congestion of lines and poor connectivity. This led to a huge surge of calls from anxious relatives to the airlines’ call centres, and frantic posts on their social media pages, desperately seeking information about the welfare and whereabouts of their friends and loved ones who were travelling during this period. It took superhuman efforts on the part of Jet Airways staff in Brussels to account for all their guests. Subsequently the airline effectively used its website, call centres and social media platforms to publicize the contact numbers of the hotels and of the Belgian Airport Crisis Centre.

In the meantime, the airline’s crew, with the exception of the two injured members, were all successfully evacuated to their respective hotels. Considering the fact that they had all been through an exceedingly traumatic experience, and to pre-empt the possibility of long term adverse psychological effects/post-traumatic stress disorder, counselling sessions were organised for the crew members in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

To further add to the complications, while the Brussels situation was keeping the ERMT fully occupied, a series of bomb threats against Jet Airways’ aircraft were received in several stations. In the light of the fact that a terrorism related activity was already in progress, these threats could not be simply dismissed, but the necessary follow-up actions caused further disruptions to the already upset schedules across the network. Eventually, all the threats proved to be hoaxes.

Back in Brussels, once the passengers and crew had been accounted for, the focus in the ERC shifted to the daunting task of planning and executing their onward travel. The airport was still closed indefinitely, the aircraft and their contents, including personal effects of the passengers and crew, were in the custody of the authorities, and the crew were exceeding flight duty time limitations. Other flights in the airline’s network too were getting affected in a domino effect, forcing cancellation and rescheduling of several flights. The ERMT worked without a break to resolve these issues so that no time would be lost and the inconvenience and discomfort to the passengers would be kept as low as humanly possible. Resultantly, as soon as the authorities took a decision to allow ferry flights out of Brussels, the waiting passengers were transported by coach to Amsterdam, from where they finally returned to their destinations. 

Lessons learned

Needless to say, the management of the emergency in Brussels proved to be a great learning experience for the ERMT and all the concerned staff in Jet Airways. While it had been repeatedly reiterated during training sessions that manuals and plans were merely guidelines and should not be regarded as magic wands that would provide a solution to every emerging situation, it was nonetheless an eye-opener to actually experience the necessity of out-of-the-box thinking to find solutions to unique issues. Under such circumstances, the importance of effective and resolute leadership coupled with good teamwork can prove to be a battle winning factor.

The oft repeated statement that emergency management and media management go hand in hand was adequately proved in this scenario. Public Relations & Corporate Communication and Ecommerce departments worked in perfect tandem to tackle the traditional media, social media and management of the website. The three mediums were well synchronised, with the same message being conveyed by all of them. Timely releases of the media statements ensured that there was no undue pressure for the media.

The power of the social media needs to be understood and appreciated. Nidhi’s photograph clearly demonstrated that the citizen journalist will get the news out first and fastest, and there are no controls in place that can put a stop to this. Also, because of the easy access to this medium, there will invariably be a large number of tasteless, obscene and even out-rightly hostile comments on the social media. While we need to learn to ignore these provocations, at the same time this would be a challenge to pro-actively devise measures to counter such allegations and thereby contain the extent of the potential damage.

No matter how well an organisation handles any emergency situation, there will still be a small percentage of disgruntled or dissatisfied clients who will not look beyond their personal needs. Such aberrations should not be allowed to take away from the good work done by an organisation under extremely difficult circumstances.

Local station level emergency response plans need far more consideration than is being done at present. Most station plans are based on a standard pattern following an aircraft crash, where the airside gets closed and the terminal remains open. In this case the reverse happened, with the airside remaining open and the terminal getting closed. Moreover, the situation was handled almost entirely by the security agencies, leaving the airlines in the uncomfortable situation where they had no answers to their clients’ questions. Unfortunately, no matter where the problem lies, the eventual brunt is borne by the airline, even though it may not have been to blame in any way.

Communications will always be an issue. The non-availability of adequate tele-com facilities caused a lot of grief and concern to affected families and also created functional problems for the emergency responders.

The greatest challenge for the affected airline’s staff will be to find, collect and account for all their passengers. The very nature of the incident leads to panic and rapid dispersal, and it is extremely difficult to trace everyone later, especially those who may have been killed or been evacuated to hospitals.

The Final Words

These few days proved to be an acid test for the emergency planning and response system for the airline. It is gratifying that it stood up resolutely to the challenges and has emerged stronger from its experience. The ERMT and its various components worked like a team and produced results. To quote Sir Winston Churchill’s famous statement: “Never before in the history of mankind, has so much been owed by so many to so few”.