7 PIA passengers travel standing in the aisles
islamabad — The PIA allowed seven passengers to travel standing in the aisles all the way to Saudi Arabia last month, prompting a probe into the serious breach of security regulations by Pakistan’s loss-making national carrier, according to media reports.
As many as seven passengers aboard the Boeing 777 PIA flight PK-743 (Karachi-Madina) on January 20 were forced to stand throughout the over three-hour flight after the airline boarded excess passengers, Dawn reported.
PIA spokesperson Danyal Gilani said the matter was being investigated. Gilani told the BBC that an internal investigation had begun “and appropriate action will be taken once responsibility is fixed”.
The report said allowing seven passengers to travel by standing all the way to the destination constituted a serious air safety breach as in the case of an emergency, passengers without seats would not have access to oxygen and could also cause congestion in case of an emergency evacuation.
The boarding passes issued to the extra passengers were handwritten and not computer-generated, sources said. The computergenerated list, provided to the
after take-off when I came out of cockpit, Ms Turab informed me that there were some extra people who had been boarded by the traffic staff Anwer Adil, PIA Captain
aircraft crew by the ground traffic staff, did not mention the excess passengers, the report said.
Sources said that the senior purser (air hostess), Hina Turab, maintains that she informed the captain that there was chaos in the cabin because the passengers were over and above the configuration, but the captain told her to “adjust” those passengers as the aircraft was on the taxi way.
Captain Anwer Adil, who operated that flight, maintains that the computer-generated sheet did not show excess passengers. He said: “After take-off when I came out of cockpit, Ms Turab informed me that there were some extra people who had been boarded by the traffic staff. I also noticed some people were those who were categorically refused jump seats by me at the check in counter before the flight.” — PTI