KARACHI: The Pakistan International Airlines has sacked seven of its pilots after their licenses were canceled by the Civil Aviation Authority.
A spokesman for PIA confirmed that the pilots, including an air hostess, have been sent termination letters. The CAA director-general issued license revocation letters after the government’s approval, the spokesman man added.
The Airline Transport Pilot licenses of 48 PIA pilots had been suspended earlier without show cause notices while they were given two weeks to file their reply. In the last week of June, the federal aviation minister said that 262 or 30% of Pakistan’s 860 pilots have “fake” licenses.
Sharing details of what he described as corruption within the CAA, the federal minister said 34 had not appeared in any of the eight exams, a requirement to qualify for a license. And 28 were suspected of having fake degrees.
His pronouncements came to the fore weeks after PK-8303, operated by Pakistan International Airlines, crashed in Karachi, killing 97 people.
On Saturday, the Vietnam government had confirmed that all Pakistani pilots working for Vietnamese airlines had valid and legitimate licenses and none had been involved in a flight incident or safety threat.
According to a government statement, “All licenses administered by the Pakistani aviation regulator are legitimate and valid. There are no fake licenses, as mentioned by the media.”
Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority informed that the country had licensed 27 Pakistani pilots and 12 of them were still active. “The other 15 pilots’ contracts had expired or were inactive due to the coronavirus pandemic,” the authority added.
Last month, Vietnam grounded all Pakistani pilots working for local airlines amid concern from global regulators that some pilots may have been using dubious licenses.
The issue of ‘dubious’ licenses drew global attention after Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan in June announced that almost 262 airline pilots had not sat their exams themselves and almost 40 percent of the pilots had fake or improper licenses.
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