KARACHI – The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has acknowledged that Pakistan’s civil aviation regulator has addressed significant safety concerns, which arose from a 2020 scandal involving fake licences of pilots, a Pakistani official said on Wednesday.
Pakistani aviation authorities grounded 262 airline pilots in June 2020 after they were suspected of cheating on mandatory licence tests, a scandal that tainted Pakistan’s aviation industry and its flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). As a result, European and US aviation regulators barred Pakistani airlines from there territories.
“It has withdrawn its objection on significant safety concerns,” said Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesperson Saifullah Khan, referring to the ICAO.
However, no representative of the ICAO, a UN aviation agency, was immediately available to comment on the Pakistani official’s statement.
The licences scandal of the Pakistani pilots came to light after the crash of a PIA plane in May 2020 in Karachi, in which 97 people were killed.
Pakistani officials accused 262 pilots, a vast majority of whom were flying commercial aircraft, of having someone else take their mandatory exams to qualify as a pilot.
After the licences scandal, the ICAO asked Pakistan to undertake immediate corrective action and suspend issuing new pilot licences.
A nine-member ICAO committee carried out a 10-day audit in Pakistan, which was concluded in early December.
Pakistan’s aviation authority distributed a statement it said came from the ICAO stating: “The Committee determined that the actions taken by Pakistan had successfully resolved significant safety concerns.”
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority has said it hoped it could resume licencing pilots in February.
PIA issued a statement citing chief executive Arshad Malik as welcoming the ICAO conclusion as a positive development for aviation in Pakistan, which would pave the way for the resumption of PIA flights to Britain and the rest of Europe.
