Hundreds of first responders, aviation officials, emergency management personnel and “injured passengers” will crowd a portion of the airfield at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Thursday afternoon, but not for a real emergency.
The airport will be conducting the full-scale training exercise from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday. The exercises, mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration, happen every three years.
This year, the “Operation Convergent” scenario will reenact a runway incursion leading to a collision between two commercial planes, airport officials said in a media release, involving over 150 passengers and crew combined.
A runway incursion, sometimes referred to as a “near-miss,” occurs when an aircraft, vehicle, or person is improperly positioned on an airport’s runway, according to the FAA.
Close calls between commercial aircraft are occurring more frequently than previously thought, a recent New York Times investigation found, including multiple recent incidents in South Florida.
For Thursday’s simulated incursion, dozens of people from the airport and the community will roleplay as “injured passengers and reuniting family members,” the release said. First responders will conduct search and rescue and triage operations, transporting the “wounded” to a simulated hospital.
The exercise will also include “controlled fire,” the release said.
Around 30 different agencies will participate in total, including the FAA, the Transportation Security Administration, the Florida Department of Transportation, the Broward Sheriff’s Office, and Broward County Emergency Management.
The exercise will take place at the northwest portion of the airfield near the North Runway, the release said, but will have “minimal impact” on actual airport operations, besides potentially unnerving passing travelers or drivers who don’t know what is going on. Participants will enter at Gate 257, located at Southwest 34th Street and West Perimeter Road.
The training exercise comes amid heightened concerns over “near-misses” on and off airports. Close calls between commercial planes occur far more often than people previously thought, the New York Times reported in August. Many of them happen on runways, and are fueled by staffing shortages; nearly all air traffic control facilities are understaffed.
Two of the recent near-misses cited in the article occurred in South Florida, at the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports. In Fort Lauderdale, on May 8, a controller cleared a Delta jet to approach the airport, putting it on a path to collide with a Spirit flight that also had been told to approach.
An F.A.A. safety manager told colleagues that the controller’s actions were “in a word, disturbing.”
The last disaster drill at the Fort Lauderdale airport, “Operation Silver Lining,” occurred in November of 2020, according to a county media release. That exercise simulated the emergency landing of a commercial plane.
Information from the New York Times was used in this report.