Reports suggest around 150 Pakistani pilots obtained license by cheating

After the crash of last month which killed 97 people in Karachi, it was found out by Pakistan’s state-run airlines that many of its pilots have wrongly obtained the license by making qualified people attend the exams. 

According to reports, a process to fire the pilots who are said to have cheated has been instigated and soon will be heard. A spokesperson of Pakistan International Airlines, Abdullah Hafeez didn’t comment on any other moves by the Airlines but claimed that the news would soon surface. 

He said that passenger’s safety is the utmost priority of any airline and reiterated, “We will make sure that such unqualified pilots never fly aircraft again.” While the Aviation Minister, Ghulam Sarqar Khan claimed that around  262 Pakistani pilots had fabricated the license in order to fly the planes without passing any national-level-competitive exam. Well, Khan also didn’t comment over revealing any additional information apart from the one stating that “pilots didn’t take the examination by themselves and made someone else write it for them.” 

Meanwhile, some officials on the condition of anonymity told the media outlets in Pakistan that people who knew how to fly planes and had zero or very little knowledge of the technical side of the exam, bribed the qualified adults to write the test in the name of them. 

PIA also confirmed the news by tweeting, “PIA acknowledges the AAIB report and has 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.” 

Well, Mr. Khan also mentioned that there were early warnings from the air control tower but the pilot remained apathetic towards it before making the first failed landing. The crash took place in the second landing attempt.