Deadly crash and fake pilots expose Pakistan’s broken airline

For decades PIA stood for a resurgent post-colonial nation, flying the flag from New York to Tokyo. Now the airline is struggling to recover from a fatal crash, years of losses, a collapse in global air travel and the stunning revelation that almost a third of the nation’s pilots obtained fake licenses. That latest admission, from Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan, tipped the airline from crisis to full-blown catastrophe. Khan didn’t say whether the pilots of the crashed Airbus jet, who were discussing the coronavirus when they retracted the landing gear just before touching down in Karachi, were among those who held dubious licenses. But his announcement came on the same evening that investigators held the cockpit crew responsible for the accident. Investigations into at least three major crashes in Pakistan in the past decade found the pilots were either at fault or didn’t follow guidelines. Khan said that 262 of over 850 pilots in Pakistan had fake qualifications and many didn’t even sit the exams themselves. “I’m not shocked by this,” said Nasrullah Khan Afridi, President of Pakistan Airlines Cabin Crew Association. “In our culture, unfortunately, there is so much wrongdoing among politicians and others that everyone is looking for a short cut. Everyone with dubious records, including the regulator which issues pilot licenses, should be punished.” The shock is reverberating beyond Pakistan, which is not the only country in Asia to have reported problems in the past over the certification of pilots as a slew of new budget carriers competed to sign up cockpit crews. In the past few years, India and some nations in Southeast Asia have also come under scrutiny for cases of exaggerated flight hours or simulator time.<br/>