The centerpiece of the show in the afternoon was watching the demonstrations of the world's most advanced (hence most expensive) airport fire truck, an absolute behemoth that is the million-dollar Rosenbauer Panther 6X6. This particular one has a highly advanced boom that can attack fire from virtually any angle with fire retardants and is equipped with forward looking infrared cameras to identify source of fire.



And the experience did not stop at watching. In a group of four, everyone had the rare (how many rare did I use in this post already? I lost count but there will be more) opportunity of doing a ride-along on these gigantic hercules. And the firefighter seemed to enjoy more than anybody. He floored the accelerator padel and did an U turn at what must be 50km/h. That thing was 50 tons with the water and foam it was carrying! Can you imagine the centrifugal force? I almost fell down from the rear seats by the side stairs! We rushed right at the dummy airplane (which used to be an SAS caravelle) for training and unleased the water cannon in close range.




Then he demonstrated the millions of functions of the boom using the very complicated joystick, including this state of the art 360 degrees sprinkler that is also a drillbit that can force its way into the fuselage.

Once I disembarked from the fire truck I had a great laugh with the Swedavia host as he suggested it would be hilarious as in Airplane! if there was an alert of some kind and the truck was to respond with all these tourists onboard. Luckily no such thing happened and everybody had a great time.