Ensuring safe flights

The Shaheen Air pilot has now been charged and there will be proceedings against him in court

The confirmation by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) that pilot Asmat Mehmood, in charge of the Shaheen Airline flight NL142, which made a crash landing at Lahore airport recently, had blood alcohol levels over the permissible limit, is alarming. According to the medical finding, the permissible level is 0.03. His level checked out at 0.83. The pilot also had very high lactate levels, indicating fatigue.

Fortunately, there were no casualties among the 121 persons aboard the aircraft as it skidded onto the runway at Allama Iqbal Airport causing the plane’s tyres to burst and creating panic among passengers and crew. The pilot had quite obviously lost control over the aircraft, according to experts. The incident could have been so much worse. It was only good fortune that saved the plane from a deadlier crash causing possible death and destruction. But the incident makes certain things very clear.

Both the CAA and the airline concerned need to take far greater care to ensure that pilots follow safety protocols strictly and are not intoxicated when in charge of a plane. Their drug and alcohol abuse histories also need to be taken into account. These are people who are responsible for hundreds of lives while on duty, and the airline and the CAA are as much to blame as the pilot for the crash landing. There have been similar occurrences in the past in which pilots, including those associated with the national carrier, were found to have consumed alcohol before taking command of planes. The pilot has now been charged and there will be proceedings against him in court. But even more important than this is the need to implement better safety mechanisms and procedures so that we can ensure planes are flown with greater care and the welfare of passengers comes before everything else. In the past few years, we have seen several incidents involving major airline accidents and near-misses. We need to look at the system in place to keep better checks on both the condition of aircraft and the pilots who fly them so that we can ensure that people who take to the skies are protected as far as is humanly possible.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2015.

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