While addressing the national assembly, Pakistan’s aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan has reported that nearly 30% of the domestic pilots have fake licenses in Pakistan who’ve sent someone else in their place to take the exam making it roughly 1 out of every 3 pilots.
The shocking news has spread like fire in the woods as it came amidst the investigation of PIA flight 8303 which crashed in a residential colony leaving 97 out of 100 people dead including the pilot and the entire crew.
The report has evoked a new debate in the country on the aviation’s credibility as these pilots not only serve PIA but other domestic and international flying companies.
The investigation has resulted in pilots’ fault as both pilots were engaged in a chat about coronavirus and its impact on their families completely ignoring the repeated attempts of contact from the control center.
This shocking result has put a new question on the merit situation in Pakistan International Airlines.
Both pilots of Flight 8303 were warned against the landing as the plane was too high but they did not pay any heed to it and made failed attempts that lead to a bad crash.
The pilot could not lower the gear properly and ended up touching the runway on engines which caused the engine to fail despite his trying to climb back to air to land again.
Pakistan’s government has started grounding a significant number of pilots on having bogus licenses owing to the gravity of the matter. According to PIA, it is looking forward to ground 150 out of its 462 pilots soon.
The public has been quite vocal in criticising PIA and the Aviation ministry after the deadly crash of flight 8303 in which almost everyone died including a few celebrities and bureaucrats. The plane crashed right after Eid, a religious holiday in the country.