JFK holds eerie plane crash drill involving screaming actors pretending to be injured passengers and cloth dummy ‘bodies’

New York’s JFK airport held a full-scale exercise simulating an aircraft crash, with actors portraying injured passengers and cloth dummies representing the dead. The drill gave emergency services a chance to practise their response, and came amid a month of repeated fire-training notices that prompted travellers to report seeing flames and smoke.

The two-hour exercise began with a simulated international arrival carrying 102 people, and involved more than 100 emergency responders from city, state and federal agencies. The FAA requires commercial airports to hold a full-scale emergency exercise every three years; JFK also said its live-fire training was controlled and would not affect flights. The drill was the first of its kind at a major New York-area airport since a fatal LaGuardia crash in March.