Pakistan’s national airline Pakistan International Airline (PIA) has written to foreign missions and global regulatory and safety bodies, assuring them that it has grounded all 141 pilots suspected of obtaining licences through unfair means, the carrier’s spokesman said yesterday.
The move looks to assuage safety concerns after Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said on Friday that the government had asked various commercial airlines, flying clubs and charter companies to ground a total of 262 pilots until investigations into their qualifications are completed.
The action was prompted by a preliminary report on the crash of a PIA aircraft in Karachi last month, which found pilots had failed to follow standard procedures.
Global safety and transport bodies expressed concern about the alleged “dubious” licences and said that they are looking into the matter.
The PIA flies a number of international routes, including to the United States and Europe.
“It is also ensured that all pilots flying PIA flights are having genuine licences endorsed by the government of Pakistan,” said a copy of the letter sent to the US embassy in Islamabad seen by Reuters.
The letter, signed by PIA chief executive Arshad Malik, also promised that the airline would remain compliant with all international aviation safety and regulatory standards.
The PIA’s spokesman said the letter had been sent to all heads of foreign missions in Pakistan as well as international aviation regulators and safety monitoring agencies.
Aviation Minister Khan had said that the move to ground the pilots would help allay global concerns and show wrongdoing had been corrected.
He added that five officials of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) were also suspended for abetting the suspected pilots.
The Pakistan pilots’ union did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
In a joint statement, the International Federation of Airline Pilots’ Associations and the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations called for the crash probe to be conducted on international standards, urging against “premature conclusions” based on incomplete or speculative information.
The scandal comes in the wake of the crash in Karachi on May 22 that killed 98 people – 97 on board the aircraft – and which authorities have essentially blamed on the two pilots.
Investigators said the aviators were chatting about the coronavirus while they attempted to land the Airbus A320 without putting its wheels down, catastrophically damaging the engines.
The plane lost power and plunged into houses near the airport as it went around for a second landing attempt.
According to a government review conducted last year, details of which were revealed on Thursday, 262 of Pakistan’s 860 active pilots hold fake licences or cheated on examinations.
More than half of them were from state-run PIA.
Until the 1970s, Pakistan’s largest airline was considered a top regional carrier but its reputation plummeted amid chronic mismanagement, frequent cancellations and financial woes.
So far, authorities have started dismissal proceedings against 28 of the 262 pilots with criminal charges likely, Aviation Minister Khan said on Friday.
PIA will bring reforms aimed at restructuring the airline, he told reporters, adding the “clean-up process” should be completed by the end of the year.
“People are saying this (revelation) will have a negative impact. But when you try to save a patient, you have to do major surgery, radiation – and even chemo,” the minister told a press conference.
He sought to blame the PIA’s problems on “the wrongdoings of previous governments”.
“God willing, 2021 will be the year of the betterment of Pakistan’s institutions and, God willing, the PIA will become the PIA of good times – the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s”.-
Several observers did not share the optimism, and doubt whether the public will trust any promised reforms.
The scandal will “prove the last nail in the coffin of PIA”, predicted Ijaz Haroon, who was managing director at the airline until he resigned in 2011 amid a union protest.
“The world is not going to trust us anymore. No one would like to fly with pilots who have bogus licences. (Khan’s) statement has further tarnished the image of the airline.”
Shahzad Chaudry, a retired Pakistan air force air vice-marshal, said the government was unfairly scapegoating the PIA, as it is the CAA that issues licences.
“We not only need a complete overhauling of the PIA but the CAA as well, as both go hand in hand,” Chaudry told AFP.
The PIA, which is helmed by a serving air force officer, currently has a fleet of 31 planes and a payroll of about 14,500 workers.
The high staff-to-plane ratio has seen long-standing accusations the government and the military use the airline to dish out jobs to cronies and retired military officers.
“The current PIA economic model is under the vested interests of political parties and different pressure groups,” Chaudry said. “No airline has 500 staff per aircraft. Our economic model right from the foundation is unsustainable.”
Three current PIA pilots who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity outlined a series of issues, including pilots being forced to work lengthy shifts of up to 24 hours.
A PIA spokesman said there was “no such case”.
Pakistan has a chequered military and civilian aviation safety record, with frequent aircraft crashes over the years.
In 2016, a PIA plane burst into flames after one of its two turboprop engines failed during a flight from the remote north to Islamabad, killing more than 40.
Qasim Qadir, the joint secretary at the Pakistan Airline Pilot Association, called for a transparent and thorough final investigation into the May 22 Karachi crash.
“Blaming (the pilots) is one thing but ... we want the system to become safer for us and the passengers. So please make it a fair investigation,” Qadir said.
Meanwhile, CNN journalist Richard Quest has remarked that the revelation that one-third of Pakistani pilots have fake licences was the most “extraordinary” story in aviation.
“It is not prevalent elsewhere. This is the most extraordinary story in aviation. Dubious licences. ‘Fake’ licences – how the investigators put it in the Pakistan aircraft investigation,” he said.
Clarifying the fact that the pilots flying the aircraft that crashed last month did have licences, Quest said: “There was a raft of other incompetent issues in the way they were flying the plane.”
He said the fact that a country is admitting that there are dubious pilot licences in the commercial airline sector “beggars belief”, adding that it raises “some serious questions” about the safety of airline operations in Pakistan.
Speaking of elsewhere in the world, he said: “We have had isolated cases where pilots have been flying for decades on forged and outdated [documents], but they always turn out to be very good pilots who just didn’t have the right paperwork. 
“This is not that case, this is a case of wholesale fraud.”
“People flying that shouldn’t have been flying – it’s a scandal,” he added.
The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz’s Ahsan Iqbal has said that the government had put the entire aviation industry at stake “to hide their incompetence in one aircraft incident”.
“Today, the entire aviation industry is being ridiculed throughout the world,” he said.
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