Emergency Exercise Bolt: Simulated plane crash at Dubbo airport

That's the exact scenario the city's first responders faced on Saturday with Emergency Exercise Bolt.

The exercise involved NSW police, Fire and Rescue NSW, NSW Ambulance, NSW Rural Fire Service, Dubbo Volunteer Rescue Association, NSW State Emergency Service and the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

They were called out to the airport where they had only minimal information on what they would find.

Here's what happened, broken down by Orana Mid-Western Police District Commander Superintendent Peter McKenna at a simulated press conference towards the end of the scenario.

"At 11.15 [Saturday] morning, there was a collision at the Dubbo airport between two aircraft. One was a Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft, the other was a general aviation aircraft. They've actually had a collision taxiing on the runway," he said.

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Superintendent McKenna said emergency services were on the scene within minutes.

At the time of the press conference, the scenario was still unfolding. It was about 1.5 hours after the collision.

"My understanding was that there have been 12 persons combined in the two aircraft, five of those persons are still being treated here at the scene by NSW Ambulance and Royal Flying Doctor Service personnel who are assisting," Superintendent McKenna said.

"The other seven people have been transported to Dubbo Hospital, two of those people are considered to be in a serious condition."

Four of the people in the general aviation aircraft had been trapped inside and the plane was on fire. Another two people were ejected and missing from the scene, until discovered by emergency services.

See more photos from the emergency scenario

Superintendent McKenna said the incident was not suspicious. He was unable to say if the pilots had alcohol in their system, or what caused the crash.

The police confirmed an investigation was under way.

During that time in the exercise, the airport remained closed and the public was warned to be patient and contact their airline to find out the status of their flights.

There was also a concern about videos being posted to social media.

"I'd like to appeal to people that if they are putting things up on social media they take into consideration the tastefulness of that, bearing in mind the next of kin may not have been informed about the situation at this point in time," Superintendent McKenna said.

He was full of praise for all of the emergency services personnel involved, saying that had done an "exceptional job".

Dubbo's emergency services are better equipped to deal with a large-scale incident like a plane crash, following a training exercise at the weekend.

The NSW Police Force, Fire and Rescue NSW, NSW Ambulance, NSW Rural Fire Service, Dubbo Volunteer Association, NSW State Emergency Service and Royal Flying Doctor Service were all involved in Emergency Exercise Bolt.

The exercise involved a simulated plane crash at Dubbo City Regional Airport, involving serious injuries and complications.

Overall, Orana Mid-Western Police District Inspector Dan Skelly said he would call the exercise a success. Not because everything was perfect, but because it highlighted areas that needed to be improved.

"That's what these exercises are about. They're about testing our current capability and identifying any shortcomings we may have with that and then improving for next time, so if there's a real life emergency we're prepared," Inspector Skelly said.

It's all done with the goal of having emergency services better prepared for an incident in real life.

"It's something we need to know that we can respond to correctly for the sake of the community and the community needs to know their emergency services are well prepared to cope with any emergencies that might occur at the airport," Inspector Skelly said.

"They should have confidence in us, and rightly so. These training incidents put us is in the best possible position should something happen."

A similar exercise was held at the Dubbo airport in 2018, but this was the first time the RFDS and SES were included. Inspector Skelly said leaving them out of the last scenario was one of the shortfalls they had identified.

Five months of planning went into designing Emergency Exercise Bolt, from finding volunteers to play the victims to organising someone to cook the barbecue after it wrapped up. Inspector Skelly said it was similar to writing a movie with different parts and a flowchart of how it should run.

It was designed to be as realistic as possible for the participants.

"Only a select few people knew what the scenario was, and that simulates real life. You never know what's going to happen. We wanted all those stakeholders to come out here not knowing what they were going to be confronted with and seeing how they dealt with it," Inspector Skelly said.

The observers will now put together a report on each stakeholder group and make recommendations on what can be improved.

Inspector Skelly said another emergency exercise, not at the airport, was likely to be held in the not-too-distant-future.