Airfield Firefighting Change Suggestions

Hi folks,

I’ve recently been taking a look at the airfield firefighting missions and there’s some stuff there that just doesn’t sit right. I’d like to suggest the following changes:

Aircraft Leaking Fuel – Code A

Currently this requires 1 Engine, RIV or Major Foam Tender.
I’d suggest removing the normal engine requirement for these incidents. They would normally be handled by the RIV or MFT. On the several fuel leaks I’ve witnessed, all were handled by the ranger vehicle and foam tender. Whilst we don’t have a ranger vehicle, this could be interpreted as the RIV. Alternatively, adding the Airfield Ops Vehicle instead of the engine could be considered a realistic substitute.

Runway Inspection

Currently requires the 1 Airfield Ops Vehicle and 1 Police Car. The addition of a police car here is just pure fiction. Runway inspections are completed by the airfield ops vehicles alone. Now, at large international airports, these may occur less frequently but at the airport I work at, these are done between flights/spates of flights so maybe, these would be better as a timed mission instead.

Hot Brakes – Code D

Now forgive me here but this mission seems completely overblown. The hot brake events I’ve seen have required fire station attendance only. We’re talking about maybe 2 or 3 fire tenders. Not the massive response that MC requires. The current mission response would seem more appropriate as an in-flight fire response.

Quote from mjkerr

From memory there are various versions of this
Not sure what the Code version refers to, I assume it is by aircraft type
I have seen everything from two to eight appliances attending!

I think that generically speaking, it would depend on the aircraft type but I would put safe money on the fact that those two to eight appliances were airfield based. The exception would be an active standby due to an emergency. THAT would be more ideal for a large turnout. But realistically, hot brakes will occur for an RTO or a landing, not a predetermined emergency.

There's so much that could realistically be done with the ARFF but common sense needs to prevail rather than a "use all units we can think of" approach. Most airports would be relatively self-contained for most emergencies.

Ground equipment fires, fuel leaks, FOD clearance etc would all be in-house. Sure, there's jobs that would gather an outside response such as: inbound emergency aircraft, fuel storage fire, terminal fires, crashes etc but police for a runway inspection.... that's just fiction. Timed missions would be a great avenue to explore as well.

Quote from mjkerr

eek, I have just noticed that this the only mission for the Police Airfield Specialization
This makes the Police Armed Cell Van pointless!
Have I missed something?

In turn this suggests some new missions for the Airfield Police...
Perimeter surveillance (timed / planned) - Perimeter patrols can also fall under the jurisdiction of airport security inside the fence
Inspection of RVP (timed / planned) - Done by Ops
Report of firearm on arriving aircraft - Yep, perfect IMO
Report of offensive weapon in luggage - Also perfect
Passenger refusing security screening -
Illegally stopped cars at Terminal
Illegally parked cars at Terminal (Recovery car to tow)
and so on

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I could literally think of maybe 20 missions for the airfield expansions. There's so much untapped potential that could, realistically, keep a large ARFF in business before even looking at the police expansion.