PIA blues: Is the flag carrier heading for a crash?
It was just another flight, bringing pilgrims back to Lahore from Jeddah on August 30. The cabin crew walked along the aisle, attending to passengers, many of whom sat comfortably without their seatbelts.
Suddenly, about 45 minutes prior to the plane’s scheduled landing, the aircraft jolted, and descended in a free-fall, dangerously plummeting from 30,000 to 16,000 feet within minutes. The passengers panicked, as they were hurled towards the aircraft’s roof, and the cabin crew struggled to stay on their feet. The aircraft had accidentally ventured into an air pocket, a turbulent movement of air mass.
Much to the passenger’s relief, the airplane managed to exit the air pocket after a while, and became stable again and the crew administered first-aid to injured passengers.
When the plane landed safely, jittery passengers exited at the Lahore airport, glad to be alive.
PIA described the incident as an “unavoidable circumstance,” since a plane’s radar system cannot detect air pockets. But while flight PK7322 was struck by forces of nature, several other PIA flights have experienced fiascos caused by human errors.
Delays in domestic and international flights are a routine for PIA, and bad weather or stray birds at runways cannot be held responsible for all of them. Besides, recent technical shortcomings in aircraft, which have caused a series of emergency or ‘technical’ landings, were hardly inevitable occurrences.
Glitches galore
French aviation authorities sent a letter, dated August 23, to their Pakistani counterpart, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), requesting them to submit a report over the failure of PIA’s Airbus A-310 plane to adhere to international safety regulations. The letter cited 40 unattended defects in the aircraft, detected by safety assessment of foreign aircraft programme inspectors.
This is the second time the airline’s A-310 aircraft face a possible ban from the European Union. In March 2007, the EU imposed a ban on most of PIA’s fleet due to safety concerns, but subsequently lifted it in November 2007.
A retired flight captain, who worked at the airline for 29 years, strongly criticised PIA’s engineers and technicians for grossly violating safety benchmarks.
“The EU knows how PIA engineers try to hoodwink them,” he said, on the condition of anonymity. “They need to stop circumventing regulations and attend to the fleet’s technical problems instead of making temporary, makeshift repairs.”
CAA’s spokesperson Pervez George says that recent irregularities in PIA’s fleet – particularly those pinpointed by the French aviation authorities – are being taken seriously and are under investigation by the organisation.
A reliable source in the airline added that technical issues in planes are aggravated by the absence of spare planes in the fleet. “There is very little ground time that engineers get to do maintenance work on aircraft because the planes are all scheduled to fly.”
‘Technical’ landings
A possible ban is not the only concern for PIA. An embarrassing string of technical shortcomings has recently plagued PIA flights including the September 27, Islamabad-Karachi flight PK-369, which made an emergency landing at Multan Airport due to a malfunctioning generator, and a UAE-bound flight PK-255, which took off from Peshawar, but had to land in Karachi due to the same issue, merely 24 hours after the first incident.
A flight from Sialkot to Jeddah, PK-745, carrying 480 passengers had to make an emergency landing in Karachi on August 6, after its landing gear failed to retract after takeoff.
On September 2, two smaller aircraft - PK-501 carrying 21 passengers from Karachi to Turbat and PK-508 with 32 passengers heading from Panjgur to Karachi - had to make ‘technical landings’ after engine failures.
PIA spokesperson Mashood Tajwar is quick to disregard the notion that these technical issues could have had perilous implications.
“We have not experienced any major problem with our fleet,” he says. “It’s routine for machines to experience minor technical problems and these don’t impact the performance of the aircraft.”
He adds that the airline is investigating the technical shortfalls in their aircraft.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 3rd, 2011.
COMMENTS (26)
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Its only a matter of time for a serious tragedy to happen, thank you for raising the issue. From the comments above I really think people do not how close PIA is to having a crash. If there is anyone in PIA management who has any respect for life they will ground most of the fleet apart from the 777s. The 747s are flying coffins please I implore all to stay away from them.
@Shahzad:
Were you in the cockpit? Did you see the T-storm on the ND? Was he deviating left or right? Was there heavy turbulence? Maybe the turbulence was heavier in other sectors and he was picking out the least turbulence he could find based on what his color-coded ND was showing? Maybe ATC told him he could not deviate more than he had because of opposing traffic?
In which case you fly through it or through the least turbulent areas and say a prayer.
He was 65 years old. In case you don't know, 65 is the new age limit world-wide. Not 60.
Why?
Because after many studies of air accidents, it was concluded that there was NO correlation between accidents and age and in fact the contrary was true. There have been many cases where experience saved the day.
As a pilot said to someone who asked the question, "Son, the one person I want to keep alive is me".
PIA is a unique airline, which has abundance of loyal passengers, flies almost at 78% passenger seat factor, yet goes in a loss. Why because of revenue pilferages by a nexus of few travel agents and PIA Marketing executives. Have we forgotten what happened during the UMRA, when seats were released to 5 travel agents at low fares and than sold to pilgrims at a higher Umra fare announced by PIA and Saudia. It was not PIA which pocketed this money, but its former Director Marketing and few others plus the travel agents. When an airline is cash starved and has a Negative Equity, than maintenance is compromised, which is exactly what has happened.
Please stop calling it an "air pocket". That phrase went out in the 50's.
It is Turbulence and is categorised as being Light, Moderate and Severe depending on intensity.
@Amjad: You must be talking East coast. At West coast not many people go with with PIA. They have to got to Toronto for that. Much easier to take Singapore or Cathay (on and off depending upon when they feel safe to go to Pakistan). Even for Atlantic route it is usually Emirates or Qatar.
Good report on PIA, which today is haunted by cronyism, corruption and a mafia dominated by American nationals, who have pilfered it and brought it to a state of collapse. A crash is around the corner if the airline is not surgically cleaned of these corrupt and incompetent executives. The flight PK 7322 piloted by a 65 year old went through an active thunder storm, which he should have appointed. This old hag should never have been allowed to fly this aircraft in the first instance.
PIA will not improve until people push the airline to improve and stop buying tickets. In Canada, most Pakistanis prefer PIA over any other airline- even when it is more expensive than say Emirates or Qatar Airlines. If you try to book a flight to Pakistan with a ticket agent in North America, they always first tell you that the PIA is fully booked and you have to take one of the UAE based carriers that no one wants. Only if you are prepared to pay more and insist on the PIA flight will you get one. It's always full when you get in the plane. My parents prefer to pay more but travel with PIA. That's why PIA doesn't improve, people don't force it to give better service because they take it no matter what.
According to some "honest" people working for PIA. Many replacement parts used for maintenance of the airlines are "gray market" , many of them sourced from dubious sources including mostly china. Airline spare-parts have to be highest quality and should be bought from approved vendors (by the Air Bus or Boeing). PIA should not maintain planes like maintaining your cars with parts made in china!!
you are looking at the rubble and asking if it is heading for a crash
No PIA Plane will Crash! Just read Darood Sharif before boarding the plane 72 times!
Government of Pakistan doles out nealy 2 billions rupees of the taxpayers money so that PIA can pay salaries to its' employees. It does not make a business sense that a doomed entity is kept alive on a ventilator for too long - as in case of PIA. I have seen PIA from close quarters; it is not the management or the pilots or engineers alone who are to be blamed. Simple fact is PIA is corrupt; PIA in its' present form cannot be solvaged; it must be consigned to the bustbin of bankcruptacy to save a precious money of this country.
I know of no "air pocket" that can cause an aircraft to fall from 30,000 feet to 16,000 feet! That is rubbish.
Radar cannot detect CAT (Clear Air Turbulence). It can pick up everything else.
I agree that if PIA does not watch out they will be banned again from flying to Europe.
The A-310 has provided great service to PIA. It needs to be phased out if for no other reason that compared to modern aircraft it is a gas-guzzler.
PIA should be privatised. It is taking a huge loss and the loss is increasing each year. If not privatised, it could close down
Great people to fly with --> the catch being most of the times there are NO people to fly with, or no planes for that matter.
I am sitting at Isb airport right this moment. Reconfirmed my flight to KHI 2 days back, arrived at airport today only to hear from the ground staff that there is NO SUCH FLIGHT TODAY. way to go national flight carrier. the next flight they transferred me to as no business class. what a waste of money.
@Gul Khan: what do you mean? describe what you have tried to say....
how sensational and misleading the opening of this piece is. it talks about an air pocket and that goes on to explain the bad conditions of airplanes. i wonder how u became a reporter maria. were u not able to find anyone from those planes that did the emergency landing due to the failure/malfunction of plane equipment. work harder than this please
@Light - Let us get away from the conspiracy theories. PIA is in a bad shape today due to years and years of negligence, mismanagement, undue interference by the various Governments...etc. etc. the list is too long. I just hope that we have a domestic alternative to PIA because the way things look, unfortunately we are stuck with PIA when it comes to domestic travel.
And I heard from some people that a person in Pakistan is soon to launch his own airline...the newly rumoured airline is linked with shaheen airlines or JS bank. And there is that one person want to elinminate competition for his investment in airline business....
Guess Who?
strange, Airplanes are following the course of trains in Pakistan.
No limit to ET's unethical way of posting NEWS.
Please privatize the airline to save it. It's bleeding tax payer money and could be run so much more efficiently.
What was the point of starting this article with an episode of a plane finding itself in an air-pocket 'caused by forces of nature? It adds nothing to the myriad issues facing PIA that are legitimately its own fault.