St Mary's Airport is a Category 3 Aerodrome, servicing both scheduled and private flights. These include S61 helicopters, Islanders and Twin Otter aircraft, as well as re-fuelling military aircraft on search and rescue duties.
In 2006 we handled a total of 9,622 scheduled aircraft movements resulting in 128,694 passengers passing through our terminal - this puts us amongst the top regional airports in Great Britain.
like many other airport fire crews we are required to perform a variety of tasks as part of our daily routine. The main task being baggage handling.
If you take the passenger figure from above and allow each passenger the baggage allowance of 33lbs the total weight of bags is approximately 2,070 tons. If you consider that we handle this 3 times (on and off the baggage trolleys) it means that each crew member on average handles about 2.5 tons of baggage per day. Add to this the mail and newspapers and the figure increases significantly.
All airports in the United Kingdom are regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority, who set the levels of fire cover that airports require. On St. Mary's the manning level is a minimum of 4 certificated firefighters to be on duty at any time. To supply the media required for fire-fighting we have 2 foam tenders, both of which exceed Category 3 requirements. Fire 1 was purpose built by Carmichael and is based on the Mercedes 1124 chassis. Fire 2 (an ex RAF fire tender) was also built by Carmichael and is a Mark 10 model. Both carry over 2000 litres of water and enough foam concentrate to produce the amounts of foam required by CAA legislation.
Initially all our fire crew are sent to The International Fire Training School at Teeside for, what is now a six week course. This gives us a certificate which is valid for four years, after which we have to return to the school for a one week revalidation course. Apart from this we are now required under CAA rules to keep up our competency by regular, monitored training. The records of this training must be available for inspection during the annual CAA audit visit. Failure to keep up with this requirement could result in firefighters having to attend further courses and recertification.
We hope that the professionalism of the Airport Fire Section is a reflection of the large investment made by the Isles of Scilly Council.
