Advertising incompetence

For any airline passenger, there is nothing scarier than the sight of a senior pilot dozing off in a plush first-class seat, apart from the presence of armed hijackers of course. The disturbing image of the sleeping captain – captured on camera and carried prominently by our national broadsheets – is the worst sort of advertisement for the national air carrier. Anyone who has seen the image will think a thousand times before boarding a PIA flight again. And with good reason too. At the controls of flight PK-785 that was carrying 305 passengers to London was a pilot who was still undergoing training. The plane was placed by ex-PALPA chief A A Hashmi in the tender, inexperienced hands of the trainee pilot soon after takeoff. And it remained so for the next two and a half hours until captain Rip Van Winkle’s sleep was finally broken. The flight crew probably did its best to cover things up but the truth cannot be suppressed for long and exposed every white lie that was told along the way.



Out of the 300-plus passengers aboard the aircraft, only one among the dozen sitting in the first-class compartment was intrepid and inquisitive enough to question the flight attendant and other crew about the sleeping man after noticing that he was in uniform and was none other than the senior pilot. By exercising his rights as a dutiful citizen, the passenger helped ensure the flight was safe from then on.

While a few of us may understand how a pilot is perennially deprived of sleep, there is no excuse for Mr Hashmi’s actions. He should have handed over the controls to the first officer, who was relegated to the observer’s seat. Or, better still he could have scratched his name off the duty roster and got another pilot to fly the UK-bound plane.

For compromising air safety and endangering the lives of the passengers and crew with such impunity the senior pilot should be punished. The actual incident occurred on April 26 and yet no action has been taken against the man. If the national airline wants to salvage its reputation, it will have to take stringent action against errant pilots and all those who sully its image.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2017.

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