The workshop was attended by over 100 participants representing fire fighting and rescue services, police, military, emergency and medical support agencies, regulators, accident investigation experts, airlines and airport ground support companies.

In his inaugural address, ADAC chairman and managing director, H.E. Khalifa Al Mazrouei said one of the key thrusts of ADAC was to make Abu Dhabi International Airport and Al Ain Airport safe and secure for passengers and other users.

"Reviewing and updating the airport emergency plan has been one of the first tasks addressed by ADAC since it took over the operations of Abu Dhabi International Airport in September last year" said H.E. Khalifa Al Mazrouei.

"A more streamlined crisis management setup has now been incorporated into the plan to ensure better command and control and effective coordination among agencies in the event of an incident. The roles and responsibilities of responding agencies as well as the procedures are more clearly defined. The plan now covers all scenarios identified by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) such as airport and off-airport incidents, and aircraft ground incidents within the airport," he added.

"The Airport Emergency Plan will not serve its purpose unless agencies involved are familiar with their roles and responsibilities. For this reason, today's workshop as well as tomorrow's Table-Top Exercise is very important as our first step to ensure the effectiveness of the plan," he said.

The Table-Top Exercise will involve representatives of all agencies in a discussion of their responsibilities, planning, problems that might occur in the full-scale exercise, and to ensure that each agency understands their task as described in the airport emergency plan.

ADAC will organize in September 2007 a full scale airport emergency plan exercise that will involve ADAC, police, air force, army, civil defense units, hospitals, airlines, ground handlers and engineering support. This exercise will ensure that valuable lessons can be learnt to further improve the Airport emergency plan.