Pakistan flag carrier to ground a third of pilots over 'dubious' licenses

[727Sky]

Pakistan flag carrier to ground a third of pilots over 'dubious' licences
By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad
 

FILE PHOTO: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) passenger plane prepares to take off from the Benazir International airport in Islamabad, Pakistan, February 9, 2016. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood
 
KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will ground a third of its 434 pilots on suspicion they hold "dubious" licences and flying certificates, a company spokesman said on Thursday.
 
The decision comes as an inquiry into a PIA crash last month, in which 97 people were killed, points to pilots not following procedures, while a government minister said the cockpit voice recorder suggested the pilots were distracted by a conversation about the novel coronavirus.
 
"We've been told that an investigation conducted by the civil aviation authority has found that about 150 of our pilots have dubious licenses," company spokesman Abdullah H. Khan told Reuters.
 
All of the pilots under investigation would be grounded, he said. The PIA has a fleet of 31 aircraft that fly domestic and international routes.
 
Successive governments have tried to overhaul loss-making PIA over the years but with little sign of success.
 
The airline's latest accident came late last month when an Airbus A320 on a domestic flight came down short of the runway in the southern city of Karachi, killing all but two of those aboard.
 
The aviation minister told parliament this week the plane's pilots and air traffic control officers had not followed procedures and the two pilots had been pre-occupied by a discussion of the coronavirus shortly before the crash.
 
The investigation into pilots' qualifications came after a 2018 crash when it was found that the test date on the license of the pilot involved had been a holiday - suggesting it was fake as testing could not have taken place on that day.
 
Another pilot had been out of the country on the date stamped on his flying certificate, Khan said. 

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1170015...-licences/

Back in 1978 (?) I was flying a Lear and a King Aire in and out of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Saudia actually had a good accident record and training department as many of the pilots were Expats.  However a Saudi L-1011 had some idiot light a stove in the back which started a fire while the aircraft was landing. They found something like 20 bodies in the cockpit who had been trying to avoid the fire. The crew had killed the electric so the automatic doors would not open. The cockpit has two ropes you can go out the side sliding windows but the crew were to stupid to use them; all Saudi crew members. 
 
The training department for every/any Airline should have detected the idiots with the fake licenses at PIA. In the states a written test with 80% passing grade or you do over, fail again you are fired. Flight Checks maybe one do over but if you fail you are fired if you can not preform. We fired a Naval trained carrier pilot because he could not land a MD-80 unless it was a controlled crash... That was really a weird deal but I think the guy was mental. Either way no room for a pilot who can not fly and land the darn plane.
 
At least that is the way it used to be done.... Maybe now they just give participation ribbons to anyone who shows up ??

[F2d5thCav]

I wonder if they discovered some knew how to take off, but not land. == !! ==

Cheers

[guohua]

Maybe they get their License from a Cracker Jacks Box.

[Wallfire]

This was very well known from the 80s, muslims say that god tells them what job they should so they cant be failed, they cant do wrong. Same with Africa, I would say perhaps 70% have not passed a test. When I was in ME for a short time other expats told me what flights had real pilots, and the ones that had "lets go meet god" pilots.

[727Sky]

The last few years have seen a critical shortage of pilots to fill the seats of both commercial and private aircraft.  Unlike past years they are evidently scraping the bottom of the of the barrel for new hires which IMO will lead to all kinds of negative possibilities.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/194281...e-concerns

            Vietnam grounds Pakistani pilots over licence concerns
published : 29 Jun 2020 at 14:36
writer: Reuters

• 0  
  
  
  
• 6  
  

A VietJet Air passenger plane is seen on a grass field after rolling off the runway at the Tan Son Nhat airport, in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam June 14, 2020. (Reuters file photo)

HANOI: Vietnam's aviation authority said on Monday it had grounded all Pakistani pilots working for local airlines, amid concern from global regulators that some pilots may have been using "dubious" licences.
Pakistan said last week it will ground 262 airline pilots whose credentials may have been falsified, after global airlines body IATA said that irregularities found in pilot licences at Pakistan International Airlines represent a "serious lapse" in safety controls.

"The head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) has ordered a suspension for all Pakistani pilots working for Vietnamese airlines," the CAAV said in a statement on Monday.
The suspension will be in effect until further notice from CAAV, it said, adding that the authority is coordinating with Pakistani authorities to review the pilots' profiles.

Vietnam had licensed 27 Pakistani pilots, and 12 of them were still active, while the other 15 pilots' contracts had expired or were inactive due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the CAAV.

Of the 12 active pilots, 11 were working for budget airline VietJet Aviation and one for Jetstar Pacific, a unit of the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines.

In a statement, VietJet said it had stopped assigning work to its Pakistani pilots as soon as news of the licence issue emerged and no pilots with Pakistan-issued licences were currently flying for the airline.

Vietnam Airlines and Bamboo Airways were not using any pilots from Pakistan, the CAAV said.
Vietnamese airlines currently have 1,260 pilots, with nearly half of them holding foreign citizenship, according to the CAAV.