Airport Business - 11

OPERATIONS
the globe and triggered unprecedented
peace-time lockdowns.
The aviation industry has in the
past dealt with viruses of the kind of
SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009), MERS
(2012) and EVD (2016) which were
local or confined to certain countries
or regions only. These viruses have
affected the aviation industry in the
past, but the effects were much less
severe. All the viruses are genetically
related to the coronavirus responsible for
the SARS and other viruses' outbreak
that appeared between 2003 and 2016.
While related, each virus was different
in its qualitative composition. How did
the world not see a new virus, more
devastating, coming? We couldn't be so
naïve. With " hindsight is 20/20, " we
now see where our strategy went wrong.
We could have done better if we were to
take the repeatedly occurring incidents
in the past as a clarion call to investigate
the matter in-depth than to deal each
one of them as a fire-fighting exercise
or a band-aid quick-fix solution. That
precisely is " hindsight is 20/20. "
Why was the world caught unaware
of the coming of this virus in the form
of a pandemic, a disaster unprecedented
in its nature, scale and global outreach;
is the moot question. Why did we let
the crisis of the past turn into a disaster?
The world's best health related
institutions, epidemiologists, virologists
and disease detectives were available
then too as they are today - engaged
now in doing everything that can been
done to find out - first the menace and
then the solution.
The entire pharmaceutical industry
is chasing the pandemic today. Biotech
companies are screening their vast
global libraries of medicines to identify
potential treatments and have numerous
clinical trials underway to test new
and existing therapies. They have
deployed their dedicated top scientists
and investments in new technologies
to speed the development of safe and
effective vaccines. They are sharing
the learnings from clinical trials in real
time with the global health regulatory
agency the WHO, governments
and other companies to advance the
development of additional therapies. In
parallel they are expanding their unique
manufacturing capabilities and sharing

" WE MUST ACCEPT FINITE
DISAPPOINTMENT BUT NEVER
LOSE INFINITE HOPE "
- MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
available capacity to ramp up production
once a successful medicine or vaccine
is developed.

Crises and Disasters
There is a very thin line of demarcation
between crises and disasters. A disaster
is a " crisis with a bad ending. " When a
crisis is perceived to have been led to bad
consequences, it tends to be a disaster.
The difference between a crisis and
disaster - depending on its respective
severity are, of course, a matter of
perception and eventually the resultant
destruction or its overall impact.
By all standards of perceptiveness
and the gravity of the situation, this
COVID-19 phenomenon can be
classified as a disaster. Technically
defined, a disaster is a natural, manmade, or technological phenomenon
resulting in an event of substantial
extent causing damage or destruction,
loss of life, or drastic change to
the environment and consequently
impacting the economic, social and
cultural fabric of people. This pandemic
has done all this and more.
Occurrences like runway incursions,
aircraft collisions on ground, fires,
aircraft hijacking attempts, terror
attack happen at any one of the
thousands of airports, around the
globe at frequent intervals. They are
however, appropriately dealt within the
ambit of pre-planned, time-tested and
proven Standard Operating Procedures
(SOPs), Contingency Plans, and Disaster
Management Plans (DMP). Such
emergency planning measures are the
processes of preparing an airport to cope
with an emergency occurring at the
airport or in its vicinity without a prior
indication or at best a short warning. An
example of crisis turning into a disaster
was averted by advanced preparedness
on ground and alertness of all concerned.
The object of airport emergency
planning is to minimize the effects of
an emergency, particularly in respect
of saving lives and maintaining aircraft

operations. The airport emergency
plan sets forth the procedures for
coordinating the response of different
airport agencies and services - fire
fighters, doctors, para-medical staff,
security personnel, law and order
mechanisms, and those agencies in the
surrounding community that could
be of assistance in responding to the
emergency. This is primarily done to
ensure that the crisis situations do not
turn into disasters.
Perhaps the other industries
including healthcare industry can take
a cue from the crisis and disaster related
aviation preparedness to upgrade their
agendas for unforeseen situations and
eventualities, the likes of the current
pandemic. There is no guarantee that
circumstances like COVID-19 would
not reoccur in a different and perhaps
an even more severe format as COVID24, 27 or 30.

My Take
Aviation today is at an inflexion point.
The level of uncertainty we're facing is
unprecedented and it's becoming hard
to respond to the crisis. Understanding
how pandemics start, and how viruses
evolve and move around the world, is
critical to managing them in a smart
and more effective way. Pieces of the
COVID-19 puzzle are still coming
together, and it's possible that scientists
will never know exactly how the whole
jigsaw looks. But the closer they get, the
better they can respond - not only to
this pandemic, but also to the next one.
I do not wish to sound pessimistic, nor
overly optimistic; but realistic.
" We m u s t a c c e p t f i n i t e
disappointment but never lose infinite
hope, " said Martin Luther King Jr.
The moral of the story thus
is: " hindsight is 20/20; foresight is
forever. " We ought to be in the state
of preparedness for any eventuality. 

DECEMBER 2020 \ AVIATIONPROS.COM / 11
http://www.AVIATIONPROS.COM
Airport Business

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