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INDUSTRY INSIDER 18 airportbusiness May 2015 and crew and quick mediation of the situation. When firefighters respond to an aviation fire, they have to be in sync really quickly. You're also dealing with a potential mobile situation. The aircraft could be moving whereas a struc- ture is stationary. And the job isn't over until everyone is back in service and everyone has gotten appropriate medical treatment. That is a huge responsibility. HOW HAS AIRCRAFT FIRE AND RESCUE CHANGED SINCE YOU ENTERED THE PROFESSION? When I entered this field, we did what's called "surround and drown." We would drive large vehicles to the scene and start discharging water to create egress paths for passengers. At that time, aircraft crashes or incidents were really not survivable and you were there trying to minimize the damage. What we learned from our two major crashes in the '80s was that survival was possible. With Delta Flight 191, 136 of the 152 passengers and 11 crew on board survived, and three years later when we had the Delta Flight 1141 crash, and 94 out of 108 passengers onboard survived, we started to realize we had to start to really look at not just aircraft firefighting, but rescue. We had to build up our skills and abilities to get more aggressive, moving from a defensive to an offensive operation. Tactically we've seen changes as well in the vehicles we drive. We now have vehicles with thermal imaging capabilities. They have forward-looking infrared cameras that can detect hot spots to help us direct fire attacks. We have HRET, which is a High Reach Extendable Turret, which allows us to pierce the skin of an aircraft and introduce agents into the environment more quickly. We've seen other technologies like PyroLance, where we can actually punch a hole through the skin of the aircraft to put out cargo fires inside. We now have high expanding foam that uses less water and more foam. We're seeing more science coming into the picture. All of these things are among the reasons why we wanted to be a research center. We not only wanted to teach people how to fight fires and rescue passengers, we also wanted to research ways to do so more safely, quickly and effectively. HOW HAS TRAINING HAD TO CHANGE AS TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES CHANGED? Learning is habitual. You have to continue to exercise the actual tools and master them. What you don't want is for something to hap- pen and your ARFF team to lack the necessary muscle to execute. We've incorporated all of these new devices, PyroLance, thermal imag- ers, HRET, foaming agents and so on into our scenario-based exercises to ensure using them becomes second nature. Going from a defensive approach to an offensive one also requires changing people's mindsets. We wanted to develop a class envi- ronment that created a progressive platform where they could learn and understand these concepts. HOW THE CENTER ADAPTED TRAINING TO TODAY'S GENERATION OF LEARNERS? Studies show you retain 20 percent of what you hear, 30 percent of what you see, 50 percent of what you hear and see, 70 percent of what you experience and 90 percent of what you teach. When you only have a white board, a projector and a PowerPoint, you're only hitting approximately 50 percent knowledge retention. Our SmartRoom's interactive ability helps students retain their knowledge by vividly engaging them. They see the systems, mecha- nisms and concepts in great detail, whether it's aircraft familiarization, airport familiarization or firefighting and rescue strategies. Their minds are vividly engaged and enriched. With near 3D animation, they can go inside an aircraft. They can see where the fuel is, whether a particular aircraft model has fuel in the wings or in the tails, what the hydraulic systems are on the aircraft, and they can even go into the cabin of the aircraft and walk down the aisles. They actually see how the doors open; how you move the latch to the side on a 737 Interactive learning technology helps students learn airport and aircraft layouts. Students also learn in the field in smoke and heat-filled aircraft.