About 40% of the pilots in Pakistan have acquired a fake flying licence, the Pakistani Minister of Aviation, Ghulam Sarwar, revealed during the provisional inquiry report in the National Assembly of Pakistan about the recent Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) crash near Karachi.
“The country has 860 active pilots, working for PIA, Serene Air and Air Blue. 262 of them asked someone else to the exams on their behalf,” the minister said. During the investigations, it showed that these pilots with a fake licence didn’t have the proper flying experience. Luckily, hundreds of pilots with a fake licence are not “actively flying”.
Sarwar added that pilots were also appointed on political basis. He said that degrees of at least four PIA pilots have been found to be a fake, the minister admitted. An inquiry has now been initiated.
Apparently PIA was perfectly happy with the fact that pilots with dubious licences were working for them. The airline will now ground them as “safety is more important than any commercial interest“.
PIA acknowledges the AAIB report and have already taken measures learning from it. An independent Flight Data Monitoring setup established to monitor & analyze all flights. All pilots with dubious licenses will be grounded. Safety is more imp. than any commercial interest
— PIA (@Official_PIA) June 24, 2020
