America bans Pakistan International Airlines flights, concerns over pilots
The United States has banned the arrival of charter flights of Pakistan International Airlines or PIA to the United States.
The US Transport Ministry has issued this order after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) expressed concern over the certificates of Pakistani pilots.
An investigation conducted last month in Pakistan found that one-third of its pilots had shown wrong information and papers related to their qualifications.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has also stopped the operation of Pakistan International Airlines for six months.
However, no comment has been made by Pakistan International Airlines in this regard yet.
Pakistan International Airlines has confirmed the US sanctions and said that it will try to remove the problems going on within the airlines.
Why Pakistani pilots are banned
Earlier in June, Vietnam’s aviation authority said that all Pakistani pilots working for local airlines have been removed.
Whereas the Aviation Authority of the European Union has also advised 32 member countries in the fake license case not to take the services of such pilots. This step has been taken at a time when global regulators have expressed concern that some pilots are using “suspicious” licenses.
In fact, recently the global airlines body IATA said that irregularities have been found in the licenses of pilots of Pakistani international airlines, “a serious omission in safety control”. After this, Pakistan said last week that it is removing 262 airline pilots, whose credibility may be fake.
Pakistan’s aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan had said in Parliament during that time that a large number of professional pilots had fraudulent licenses or they had cheated in examinations.
Ghulam Sarwar Khan also said that it has been found in the investigation that more than 260 out of 860 pilots either had fake licenses or rigged their examinations.
In May this year, a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed in Karachi. 97 people were killed in this accident.
In the initial report of the committee set up to investigate the accident, it was said that Air Traffic Control (ATC) and pilots were responsible for the accident.
Ghulam Sarwar Khan told Parliament that he was not following protocol. He also said that the pilot and the co-pilot were talking about the worldwide corona epidemic and that was why the attention of the aircraft pilots was diverted.
