Safety Investigation Board to do first independent inquiry

Board was separated from CAA to prevent undue influence on probes

KARACHI: The Safety Investigation Board will do its first investigation of an air crash after becoming independent from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Earlier reports always held the captains responsible, clearing the aviation authorities.

The board was taken out of the control of the CAA, to prevent its investigations possibly influenced by CAA, after it issued its investigation reports on the two previous plane crashes. Now it is reporting to Aviation Division.



PIA flight PK661 that took off from Chitral for Islamabad on Wednesday went off from the radar system half an hour before crash. During this period the contact between the captain of the unlucky plane and the air traffic controller remained disconnected.

What happened during this period and at the last moments of the flight will remain unanswered till the voice recorder and the black box of the plane could provide some information about it. Both the devices have been recovered from the site of the crash.

Sources said that the captain of the unlucky PIA plane, that fell in the hills of Havelian Hazara, had given a mayday call in the last moments, which is given in the time of high danger situations only. These two devices were fixed in the rudder of the plane and will be sent abroad to be decoded.

The sources said it will be the board’s first independent investigation of any plane crash.

Flights of two of Pakistan’s private airlines, Airblue and Bhoja, have had similar crashes in the past. The investigation reports that were compiled with the help from their black boxes and voice data recorders held their respective pilots responsible for the accidents.

The Airblue flight from Karachi crashed in Margala hills on 28 July, 2010. A 34-page report issued 15 months later by the board said that the captain Chaudhry Pervaiz Iqbal was responsible for the crash.



Just two years later, on 20 April, 2012, another plane from Karachi crashed near Islamabad airport. This time it was a flight of the Bhoja Air that fell near Hussain Abad close to the airport. Again the report put the responsibility on the captain of the Bhoja flight.

Islamabad was under heavy rain spell and winds on both of the occasions. The concurrent plane crashed raised questions about the safety arrangements of the Civil Aviation Authority that looks after safety on airports across the country. The planes were inspected once again. The two reports were compiled by the Safety Investigation Board. However, certain quarters suspected that CAA can influence the investigations and, therefore, the board was taken out of the influence of the CAA.  (TRANSLATION BY ARSHAD SHAHEEN)

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2016.