NMX‑DAR‑70 / Rev 00 / pneumatic air-lifting bags / ICAO Doc 9137 2026 · Product Page

NMX-DAR-70 · ENGINEERED TO ORDER — DISABLED AIRCRAFT RECOVERY KIT (DARK)

Lift the aircraft. Clear the runway.

Name: Disabled Aircraft Recovery Kit (DARK)
Brand: Neometrix

The kit that lifts a disabled aircraft and clears the runway. When an aircraft is stranded on the runway, the airport stops — so ICAO requires a recovery kit sized to the largest aircraft that uses it. Low-pressure pneumatic air-lifting bags spread the load and raise the airframe gently, hydraulic jacks and shoring hold it, and tethering, towing and trolleys recover it and reopen the runway. We build and integrate the kit — the air supply and control, the jacking, the tethering, the towing and the transport; the lifting bags themselves are bought in. Engineered to order — no specific delivered kit is claimed.

Enquire — aircraft recovery kit Capability sheet (PDF)

Fig · 01 An aircraft lifted on pneumatic air-lifting bags and jacks — the load-spreading, gentle lift at the heart of a recovery — illustrative, not a delivered installation

Lift

air bagspneumatic + jacks

Recovers

to Code Fup to wide-body

Standard

ICAO 9137Doc 9137 Pt 5

Kit

completelift / jack / tow

Goal

reopenclear the runway

ISO 9001 / 14001 Engineered to order Aircraft GSE & lifting ICAO Doc 9137 Noida · India

Overview

A blocked runway is the emergency.

Most airports have one runway, and a single disabled aircraft on it stops every movement — arrivals divert, departures hold, and the cost climbs by the hour. That is why ICAO Doc 9137 Part 5 requires each aerodrome to keep a disabled-aircraft recovery capability, sized to the largest aircraft that uses it and ready to deploy fast. The job is not just to move the aircraft — it is to lift it without doing further damage, and to get the runway back.

Illustrative image, not a delivered installation — a set of large reinforced pneumatic air-lifting bags, some inflated and some flat, with an air-cylinder bank and a control manifold and hoses, matte and unmarked, no text and no people

Fig · 02 The pneumatic air-lifting-bag set and its air supply — the load-spreading lift core — illustrative, not a delivered installation

Lift it gently — on air. A damaged airframe is fragile and may still be loaded with fuel and cargo, so you cannot simply jack it under a point. Low-pressure pneumatic air-lifting bags, placed under the fuselage and wings, spread the load over a wide area and raise the aircraft slowly and level — the gentlest way to lift a large, fragile structure.

Hold it, then recover it. Hydraulic jacks, shoring and cribbing hold the aircraft safely at each stage; tethering stops it rolling or shifting; and then the undercarriage is repaired or replaced, or the aircraft is supported on a cradle or bogie and towed clear — runway reopened.

The complete kit — our franchise. A DARK is an air, hydraulic and structural problem: the air supply and control, the jacking and shoring, the tethering, the towing and the transport trolleys that keep it stored and ready. That is exactly our aircraft-ground-support, hydraulics and recovery-equipment competence — the lifting bags themselves are the specialist bought-in part.

You do not get a second chance to lift a damaged, loaded aircraft — do it wrong and you break its back. Air bags spread the load and lift it gently; the rest of the kit holds it and takes it away. Getting that right is the whole job.

A Closed Runway Is the Emergency

Reopen it fast

One disabled aircraft stops the whole airport, so ICAO Doc 9137 requires a recovery kit sized to the largest aircraft using it, ready to deploy. The DARK exists to lift the aircraft and get the runway back quickly.

Lift It Without Wrecking It

Air bags spread the load

A damaged airframe is fragile and may be loaded, so pneumatic air-lifting bags raise it gently and level, spreading the load over a wide area — the safe way to lift a large aircraft, coordinated from a control console.

The Complete Kit, Our Franchise

Bags bought-in; the kit is ours

Honest split: Neometrix builds and integrates the air supply and control, jacking, shoring, tethering, towing, cradle and transport trolleys; the pneumatic lifting bags are bought-in specialist. Aircraft-GSE, hydraulics & recovery competence.

Architecture

Stabilise, lift, recover.

The schematic shows the recovery sequence — assess, stabilise, lift, recover and tow — and the kit that does it. The detail panel covers the air-bag lift and the ICAO standard it is sized to.

FIG · 03DARK ARCHITECTURE · ASSESS / STABILISE / LIFT / RECOVER · AIR-LIFTING BAGS + JACKS · ICAO DOC 9137

Fig · 03 Stabilise, lift on load-spreading air bags, then recover and tow the aircraft clear — sized to the largest aircraft, per ICAO Doc 9137

Arc · 01

Assess & Stabilise

Plan the lift for the aircraft and its damage, then shore and tether so the aircraft cannot roll or shift. A wrong lift on a damaged, loaded airframe makes it worse, so the plan and the stabilisation come first.

Arc · 02

Air-Lifting Bags & Control

The core: low-pressure air bags under the fuselage and wings that spread the load and lift the aircraft gently and level, inflated in a coordinated sequence from an air supply and control console.

Arc · 03

Jacking, Shoring & Tethering

Hydraulic jacks, cribbing and shoring to hold the aircraft safely at each stage of the lift, and tethering and anchoring to keep it stable — the safety half of a recovery.

Arc · 04

Recover, Tow & Transport

Repair or replace the undercarriage, or support the aircraft on a cradle or bogie, and tow it clear; the whole kit lives on transport trolleys or in a container, stored ready and deployed fast.

Have a disabled-aircraft recovery, DARK or airfield-recovery requirement? Send the aircraft class and the aerodrome — a clause-by-clause compliance matrix within two working days · [email protected]

Send tender spec

Specifications

Reference kit, sized to the aircraft.

The parameters below describe a reference recovery kit. The air-bag capacity, the jacking, the towing and the transport all follow from the largest aircraft the aerodrome must recover — up to wide-body (ICAO Code E/F) — and how fast it must deploy.

Illustrative image, not a delivered installation — a disabled aircraft recovery kit laid out on transport trolleys: tall hydraulic jacks, timber and steel shoring blocks, tethering strap reels, a tow bar and a wheeled dolly, matte and unmarked, no text and no people

Fig · 04 The recovery kit on its transport trolleys — jacks, shoring, tethering and towing gear, stored ready — illustrative, not a delivered installation

Where an aircraft recovery goes wrong

In the lift and the stabilisation, not the towing. A point jack under a damaged, loaded airframe can buckle it; an uncoordinated lift twists the structure; a poorly stabilised aircraft rolls or drops during the recovery; and a kit that is not stored ready or is under-sized for the aircraft leaves the runway closed for hours longer.

That is why the lift is a load-spreading air-bag lift, coordinated and controlled; the aircraft is shored, jacked and tethered at every stage; and the kit is sized to the largest aircraft and stored ready to deploy. The measure of a recovery kit is how fast, and how undamaged, the runway comes back.

Full specification — expand

System	Disabled aircraft recovery kit (DARK) — engineered & integrated: pneumatic air-lifting bag system, air supply & control, hydraulic jacking & shoring, tethering, towing & cradle, transport trolleys, training & readiness
Standard	ICAO Doc 9137 Part 5 (Airport Services Manual — Removal of Disabled Aircraft); IATA Aircraft Recovery Manual; sized to the aerodrome’s largest aircraft
Lift	Low-pressure pneumatic air-lifting bags — load-spreading, gentle, level lift of the fragile airframe; jack-assisted
Air Supply & Control	Air cylinders / compressor + control console for a coordinated, monitored, level inflation
Jacking, Shoring & Tethering	Hydraulic jacks, cribbing & shoring to hold the aircraft; tethering & anchoring for stability at each stage
Recovery & Towing	Undercarriage repair / replacement or cradle / bogie support; tow bars, dollies & ground-handling gear
Transport & Readiness	Transport trolleys / containerised storage — the kit stored ready, deployed rapidly to the incident
Capacity	Sized to the largest aircraft using the aerodrome — up to wide-body (ICAO Code E/F)
Sourcing	The pneumatic lifting bags are bought-in specialist items; Neometrix engineers & integrates the kit, air supply & control, jacking, shoring, tethering, towing, cradle & transport
Status	Engineered to order · sized to the aircraft class & the aerodrome · quoted across disabled-aircraft recovery requirements · no specific delivered kit is claimed on this page

PDF · 1 page

Disabled Aircraft Recovery Kit (DARK) — Capability Sheet

Tender Response

Send your aircraft class & aerodrome — compliance matrix in two working days

Variants

One capability, four sets.

Tenders call it a disabled aircraft removal kit, a DARK, an aircraft recovery kit or an air-lifting-bag set. The principle — lift gently on air, stabilise, recover and tow — is common to all; the kit is scaled and configured to the aerodrome.

Var · 01

Full Airport DARK

The complete ICAO Doc 9137 recovery kit, sized to the largest aircraft an aerodrome handles — bags, air, jacking, shoring, tethering, towing and transport as one deployable capability.

Var · 02

Pneumatic Air-Lifting-Bag System

The lift core: the air-bag set, air supply and control console — the gentle, load-spreading lift at the heart of every recovery.

Var · 03

Jacking, Shoring & Tethering Set

The hydraulic jacks, cribbing, shoring and tethering that hold and stabilise the aircraft — usable in maintenance jacking as well as recovery.

Var · 04

Recovery Towing & Transport

The cradle / bogie, tow bars, dollies and transport trolleys that move the aircraft clear and keep the kit stored ready for rapid deployment.

Applications

Where it recovers.

Wherever a disabled aircraft has to be lifted and removed to reopen a runway — and wherever the same heavy-lifting-on-air is needed.

A · 01Civil-airport runway recovery — reopen the runway to ICAO

A · 02Air-base & airfield aircraft recovery — military airfields

A · 03Wide-body & heavy-aircraft recovery — the largest aircraft

A · 04Rapid runway reopening — minimise the closure and diversions

A · 05Disaster & USAR heavy lifting — the same air-lifting-bag technology

A · 06Aircraft-maintenance jacking & lifting — the jacking and shoring set

FAQ

Common questions.

Plain-language answers from the engineering team.

Q · 01 What is a Disabled Aircraft Recovery Kit, and why does an aerodrome need one?

A Disabled Aircraft Recovery Kit (DARK) is the set of equipment an airport or air base keeps to lift a disabled or crashed aircraft and remove it from the runway or movement area, so the runway can reopen. The reason it matters so much is simple: most airfields have a single runway, and one aircraft stuck on it — a burst tyre, a collapsed nose gear, a runway excursion — closes the whole airport. Every arriving flight has to divert and every departure holds, at enormous cost and disruption, until the aircraft is moved. Because of that, ICAO Doc 9137 Part 5 (the Airport Services Manual chapter on removal of disabled aircraft) requires every aerodrome to hold a recovery capability sized to the largest aircraft that operates there, and to be able to deploy it quickly. The kit therefore has to do two things well: lift the aircraft without causing further damage (it may be structurally compromised and still loaded with fuel and cargo), and get it clear fast. Which is why it is built around gentle, load-spreading pneumatic lifting rather than brute force, and why readiness — the kit stored, maintained and rehearsed — is part of the product.

Q · 02 How do you lift a large aircraft without damaging it?

With low-pressure pneumatic air-lifting bags, because they spread the load. An aircraft structure is designed to carry flight loads through specific paths, not to be jacked up under an arbitrary point — and after an incident it may be bent, cracked or still full of fuel. If you put a hard point jack under the wrong place, or lift one side faster than the other, you can buckle or twist the airframe and turn a repairable aircraft into a write-off (or worse, cause it to shift or fall). Air-lifting bags avoid this: large, flat, reinforced bags are slid under the fuselage and wings and inflated slowly, so the lifting force is spread over a wide contact area and the whole aircraft rises gently and level. They are inflated in a coordinated sequence from a control console, so every bag rises together and the load stays balanced, with hydraulic jacks and shoring taking over to hold the aircraft at height while the recovery proceeds. It is the same principle that lets air bags lift a collapsed concrete slab in a rescue: broad, gentle, controlled force instead of a hard point load. Getting that lift right — the plan, the bag placement, the coordination, the stabilisation — is the core skill of an aircraft recovery.

Q · 03 What is in the kit?

A complete recovery kit has five groups of equipment. First, the pneumatic air-lifting bags — a set of low-pressure lifting bags in a range of sizes to suit the aircraft and the lift height — with their air supply (compressed-air cylinders or a compressor) and a control console / manifold that inflates them in a coordinated, monitored way. Second, hydraulic jacks, cribbing and shoring — jacks to lift and hold, and timber or steel cribbing and shoring to build a stable support under the aircraft at each stage. Third, tethering and anchoring — straps, ground anchors and restraints that stop the aircraft rolling, sliding or tipping during the operation. Fourth, recovery and towing gear — the means to repair or replace a collapsed undercarriage, or to support the aircraft on a cradle or bogie, plus tow bars, dollies and ground-handling equipment to move it clear. And fifth, transport and storage — the trolleys or containers that keep the whole kit organised, protected and ready, so it can be loaded and taken to the incident quickly. Neometrix builds and integrates all of this around the bought-in lifting bags, and includes the training and readiness that make the kit usable when it is needed.

Q · 04 What standard is it built to?

The governing document is ICAO Doc 9137, Airport Services Manual, Part 5 — Removal of Disabled Aircraft, which sets out the aerodrome’s obligation to have a recovery capability, how it should be organised and planned, and that it must be matched to the aircraft types the aerodrome serves. Alongside it, the IATA Aircraft Recovery Manual (ARM) gives the airframe-manufacturer and industry guidance on how a given aircraft type should be lifted and recovered — where the lifting points and no-lift zones are, recommended bag placements and so on — and each aircraft manufacturer publishes its own recovery data. In practice this means a kit is not a generic box of equipment: it is sized and configured to the largest aircraft (and the mix of aircraft) using the aerodrome — commonly up to wide-body, ICAO aerodrome reference code E or F — and the recovery is carried out to the aircraft manufacturer’s procedure. We engineer the kit to the cited standard and the specific aircraft class in the requirement, and we are explicit about the reference documents in the compliance matrix.

Q · 05 What do you build, and what is bought-in?

We are clear about the split. The pneumatic lifting bags themselves are bought-in specialist items — they are precision reinforced-elastomer products from established makers, and we source and integrate them rather than manufacture them. What Neometrix engineers, builds and integrates is the rest of the kit and everything that makes it a usable system: the air supply and control (cylinder banks or compressor, manifolds, the control console for coordinated inflation), the hydraulic jacking, cribbing and shoring, the tethering and anchoring, the recovery and towing gear including cradles / bogies, and the transport trolleys and containerised storage — plus the integration, documentation, training and readiness. This is squarely our competence: it is the same aircraft ground-support, hydraulics, pneumatics, lifting and recovery engineering behind our aircraft-GSE, hydraulic jacking and recovery-equipment lines. So the specialist air bags come from the specialists, and the kit that turns them into a complete, ready, aerodrome-specific recovery capability is our engineering. To be plain about status: this is offered engineered-to-order and quoted against disabled-aircraft recovery requirements; no specific delivered kit is claimed on this page.

Q · 06 Does the same equipment serve disaster rescue?

Yes — the core technology crosses over directly. Pneumatic lifting bags are a standard tool of Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) and disaster response: after an earthquake, a building collapse or a major accident, rescuers use low-pressure and high-pressure lifting bags to raise heavy collapsed slabs, beams and vehicles in a controlled way to free casualties, for exactly the same reason they are used on aircraft — they deliver a large, gentle, controllable lifting force where a hard jack would be dangerous or impossible to place. So a disaster-response agency’s air-lifting-bag set with its air cylinders and control is, at heart, the same lift system as the core of an aircraft recovery kit, packaged for a different job. Because we build the air supply, control, and the surrounding kit and trolleys for the aircraft case, the same competence extends naturally to heavy-lifting and rescue lifting-bag sets for disaster-response use — a related market served by the same engineering, with the specialist bags again bought-in.

↗

The recovery & lifting line from Neometrix.

The airfield equipment, the hydraulic jacking and the recovery equipment alongside it — engineered at our Noida facility.

↗ Airfield

Aircraft Arresting Gear System

Stopping an aircraft safely on the runway — the airfield-safety sibling to runway recovery.

↗ Jacking

Hydraulic Jack Machine

Hydraulic lifting and jacking — the jacking half of a recovery, in its own right.

↗ Recovery

Armoured Recovery Vehicle Equipment

Recovering a disabled vehicle on land — the recovery-equipment sibling to aircraft recovery.

Browse all Neometrix product lines.

Get a quotation

Send the aircraft class
and the aerodrome.

The defence programmes desk replies within two working days with a clause-by-clause compliance matrix and a budgetary quotation. Write to [email protected] or use the form.

Enquire — aircraft recovery kit Capability sheet (PDF) +91 7777 876 876

ISO 9001 / 14001 ENGINEERED TO ORDER — DISABLED AIRCRAFT RECOVERY KIT (DARK) PNEUMATIC AIR-LIFTING BAGS · HYDRAULIC JACKING · ICAO DOC 9137 · REOPEN THE RUNWAY ENGINEERED IN NOIDA · INDIA

Lift the aircraft. Clear the runway.

A blocked runway is the emergency.

Reopen it fast

Air bags spread the load

Bags bought-in; the kit is ours

Stabilise, lift, recover.

Assess & Stabilise

Air-Lifting Bags & Control

Jacking, Shoring & Tethering

Recover, Tow & Transport

Reference kit, sized to the aircraft.

Where an aircraft recovery goes wrong

One capability, four sets.

Full Airport DARK

Pneumatic Air-Lifting-Bag System

Jacking, Shoring & Tethering Set

Recovery Towing & Transport

Where it recovers.

Common questions.

The recovery & lifting line from Neometrix.

Aircraft Arresting Gear System

Hydraulic Jack Machine

Armoured Recovery Vehicle Equipment

Send the aircraft class
and the aerodrome.

Similar Products

Share This Page

Lift the aircraft. Clear the runway.

A blocked runway is the emergency.

Reopen it fast

Air bags spread the load

Bags bought-in; the kit is ours

Stabilise, lift, recover.

Assess & Stabilise

Air-Lifting Bags & Control

Jacking, Shoring & Tethering

Recover, Tow & Transport

Reference kit, sized to the aircraft.

Where an aircraft recovery goes wrong

One capability, four sets.

Full Airport DARK

Pneumatic Air-Lifting-Bag System

Jacking, Shoring & Tethering Set

Recovery Towing & Transport

Where it recovers.

Common questions.

The recovery & lifting line from Neometrix.

Aircraft Arresting Gear System

Hydraulic Jack Machine

Armoured Recovery Vehicle Equipment

Send the aircraft classand the aerodrome.

Similar Products

Share This Page

Send the aircraft class
and the aerodrome.