Pakistan government forms joint probe team to probe PIA plane crash

LAHORE: The Pakistan government has formed a joint investigation team to step up the pace of the probe into last month’s crash of a PIA aircraft in Karachi that killed 98 people.

The joint investigation team (JIT) was constituted on Friday, comprising officials from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), to probe the accident involving an aircraft of the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). The accident was one of the worst in Pakistan’s aviation history.

“The three-member JIT headed by FIA Immigration Lahore Additional Director

Imran Yaqoob, is tasked to finalise the matter on top priority and submit the report to the government at the earliest,” an FIA official said.

The official said the JIT has been constituted in compliance with the Senate Committee on Interior which took note of the plane crash and asked the government to constitute a high-power committee. A four-member team of the Aircraft Accident and Investigation Board led by Air Commodore Muhammad Usman Ghani has already been investigating the crash of Flight PK-8303.

Besides, a French team also visited Pakistan to conduct an independent probe and collected evidence from the crash site as well as inspected the runway. The Pakistan government has said that it will make the preliminary report of the AAIB team public on June 22.

The PIA Airbus A-320 aircraft, with 99 people on board, crashed in the Model Colony near Jinnah International Airport in Karachi on May 22, killing 97 people. Two passengers miraculously survived.

A 13-year-old girl who was injured on the ground later succumbed to her injuries, taking the death toll in the incident to 98.

The Senate Committee has recommended that the FIA office in Lahore should examine if the engineering branch of the PIA at Lahore was being maintained as per the given international standards and how many times the small components of the aircraft involved in the accident had been made/repaired from local companies/workshops. The Committee said it was felt that the maintenance system of aircraft had been deteriorating day by day and becoming irresponsible which was visibly noted over the past few tragic incidents.