Do not be alarmed - Hawke's Bay Airport to run Emergency Exercise

Hawke's Bay Airport will run an emergency exercise tomorrow. Photo / File

Emergency services and personal are set to flood the Hawke's Bay Airport Terminal tomorrow . But don't be alarmed, it's just a training exercise.

Operations manager Gareth Mentzer said while it would have no impact on passengers, doing it during opening hours ensured they could accurately test their systems.

The drill, scheduled for 9.30am, will involve police, ambulance and fire services, as well as airport staff.

"The reason for that is then you actually test access into the airport. So emergency services come in as they would normally in an emergency through Watchman Rd, making sure the access works, where the muster point is, [and] where your incident control point is."

As part of Civil Aviation regulations, the airport conducts an emergency exercise alternating between a simulated "real life" event, as planned for tomorrow, and a desktop exercise involving all response parties in alternate years.

This year's scenario will be an airplane crash.

Mentzer said it was hugely beneficial to test preparedness, as well as exercise the airport's emergency management plan.

"There will always be continuous improvement out of it, areas where we think we can change or tweak or just ensure we've got all the systems and processes in place to be able to respond to an emergency."