Improving flight safety in Pakistan

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon (We belong to God and to Him we shall return [2:156]). We shall all return to Him — those who will pass away from natural causes; those whose demise is hastened by Covid-19; and yes, the passengers, crew and residents of Model Colony who have just passed away in another senseless airline crash in Pakistan.

It’s no news that Pakistan has a poor history when it comes to getting air passengers home safely. This is the sixth airplane crash in the last decade, with more senseless lives lost. From the Bhoja crash in 2012 to the loss of so many this week on PK8303, close to nothing has been done in recent years to materially improve the safety of Pakistanis looking to travel.

With this crash, Pakistan creeps back up into the top three most unsafe countries in the world to board a plane, just behind Iran and Indonesia. Pakistan is tragically in the midst of another health crisis ravaging our cities, but it’s not the first time, and may unfortunately not be the last, where the country was distracted by one crisis, and in so doing stopped paying attention and created another. Pakistan was struggling to respond to the floods in northern Pakistan in July 2010 when Airblue’s flight 202 crashed in Islamabad, killing all 152 on board, including my father.

So, what needs to be done to make air travel in Pakistan safer? I’ve spent the last few years working with the Flight Safety Foundation and learning from aviators, regulators, lawmakers, lawyers and various subject matter experts trying to answer this question.

It boils down to four simple things: culture, systems, leadership and the law.

Planes aren’t finding new ways to crash. Every plane accident is preventable. The technology that gets you and me into the air and brings us back down hasn’t changed much since the Orville brothers first took flight in Kitty Hawk in 1903. The problem is not finding new solutions, but rather implementing existing ones and establishing the right culture of safety and professionalism.

I’ve spoken to senior pilots from Middle Eastern airlines that have confirmed they send sub-par, second tier planes to Pakistan that wouldn’t pass tests or inspections in the US and Europe. Why do they do that? Because they know they can get away with it in Pakistan, and the country has lower standards. The standards for domestic flights, including PK8303, are even lower than the requirements for international flights. Why doesn’t Pakistan hold or expect the same level of safety as other countries around the world? The culture of unadulterated corruption and unprofessionalism has human costs when it proliferates, and the resulting lack of seriousness about routine plane inspections or pilot safety tutorials results in casualties.

The best airlines in the world have an unbreakable culture of safety and professionalism. They enforce this culture through robust safety management systems that comprehensively look after pilots, equipment and every part of the chain getting you to your next location safely. The Civil Aviation Authority should audit the safety management systems of each airline and publish the results. This includes ensuring pilots are trained on the latest technologies and developments in air safety around the world. We should be holding regulators, airports, pilots, airlines and all related staff to incredibly high standards, as they have an immense responsibility, and inform the public when they falter.

Think about the trust you place in your doctors when they give you medicine that will knock you out as they cut you open: you are entrusting your life to them. In a similar way, we entrust our lives to pilots, airlines and their system and culture of safety to get us home in one piece, except pilots often have the lives of tens to hundreds of passengers in their hands. Culture and systems are critical.

So how does one change a corrupt and unprofessional culture? The aviation industry is certainly not the only one affected by this in Pakistan. In my humble view, it comes from competent leadership and a healthy dose of optimism.

It starts at the top. We need the Prime Minister, the President, and every member of the government from the highest judge to the entry level office clerk to take their responsibility seriously, and most importantly the airline industry. Pakistan has some great aviation rules and standards on file, but they’re useless if not enforced. Pay civil servants and regulators a fair wage.

We need our government officials and regulators to hold people accountable. You might laugh when you hear that: this is Pakistan, right? But why can’t we be optimistic about this? Why can’t we believe that Pakistani lives matter just as much as any other life across the world?

Pakistan needs to enforce existing standards. Let’s not reduce our laws to mere words on a page, but true guidelines for how we operate and care for one another.

In consultation with the legal team at Axis Law, I’ve conducted a detailed analysis of Pakistan’s aviation laws and identified the following gaps that need to be filled.

These include: helping affected families by establishing formal support mechanisms (crisis centres, counseling, etc) for families affected by aviation incidents; respect for those having departed through standardised processes and procedures in line with Islamic and international best practices for the handling; and burial of departed persons when it comes to plane crashes. We’ve all heard horror stories of families not being able to find their kin, and families taking the incorrect remains home. Let families grieve without the headache by expanding Pakistan’s body of law related to aviation disasters to facilitate inheritance/ succession related matters. Then, there is need to enhance domestic flight standards to meet international ones and enforce existing ones; require airlines to have on record a minimum level of insurance and liability coverage commensurate with international standards; give Pakistan transparency by creating a truly independent Safety Investigation Board with the appropriate jurisdiction, members and authority; and fund safety initiatives and create room in Pakistan’s budget to fund each of the initiatives above.

There is much ahead. First and foremost, support for the families affected. And a strong need for answers. We need a (hopefully) impartial investigation into the cause of the crash. And then fair compensation for those affected. And then change. Lots of much-needed change, God willing.

But for now, we mourn. 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2020.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.