As the largest and the busiest air gates of Armenia, Zvartnots International Airport continues to expand at a remarkable pace over the last decade. Such developments pose a distinct challenge to the airport's in-house ARFF service, bringing forth notable investment in recent years in upgrading its firefighting equipment and facilities.
ARFF stations at Zvartnots International Airport are located directly on the airfield so as to ensure rapid response to any aircraft-related incident in 2 to 3 minutes as required by ICAO. ARFF service is equipped with three state-of-the-art Striker-3000 ARFF apparatus, which are specially designed for aircraft firefighting operations and as such carry three different extinguishing agents; water foam and dry chemical extinguishing agent. Each truck is able to carry 3000 gallons of water, 420 gallons of foam concentrate and 225 kg of dry chemical extinguishing agent. Fire suppression can be pumped out at 125 liters per second per apparatus.
The ARFF service provides aircraft and airside fire protection 24 hours per day. ARFF department is also linked to mutual aid agencies where additional services and resources should be required. Over the years ARFF service keeps devoted to its primary purpose and mission; to save lives by providing high-quality fire rescue services to travelers.
Of particular importance for Zvartnots International Airport is to keep the firefighting team constantly up to date with all developments across the airport. Therefore, under the ICAO requirements, each member of staff completes a theoretical and physical training cycle, which involves participating in a number of assessments that demonstrate their competency to continue as a firefighter.