Fake pilots, virus and crash expose a broken airline

YEARS OF MISMANAGEMENT AND UNACCOUNTABILITY LED TO PIA’S SLIDE

For decades Pakistan International Airlines Corp. 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 SE 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.

Reforms

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.

“Everyone with dubious records, including the regulator which issues pilot licenses, should be punished.”

The deluge of disasters at PIA has galvanised the government to speed up reform of the industry in Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan has ordered the nation’s Civil Aviation Authority to fast track further actions for the nation’s airlines, and the authority itself, including cutting jobs.

They have their work cut out. PIA is the most likely airline in the world to fail in the absence of a bailout as Covid-19 cuts demand for air travel, according to a Bloomberg News analysis. The carrier has one of the highest staff-to-planes ratios, after successive governments shied away from major payroll cuts on concern they would spark labour unrest.

Even without the latest round of catastrophes, the airline was struggling from high costs and increased competition from rivals. PIA hasn’t made a profit in 15 years and liabilities amounted to $3.8 billion (Dh13.95 billion) at the end of last year.

After years of propping up the carrier with cash bailouts — the latest was Rs3.2 billion ($19 million) last month for PIA to pay interest payments — the government has promised to carry out measures including job cuts and the sale of non-core assets.

PIA is managed by either generalist bureaucrats, or military officers, or both, fostering a bureaucratic and unaccountable system, according to Mosharraf Zaidi, a senior fellow at Islamabad-based think tank, Tabadlab.