To my surprise, the Director General Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is interested all of a sudden in the salaries and recruitment of more pilots in PIA, when the regulatory body itself is responsible for the ban imposed by European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on all flight operations by airlines under their regulatory control into Europe.
CAA Pakistan should be focused on setting its own house in order to rectify EASA objections that the regulatory body seems to have lost the capacity and capability to perform its supervisory role as a regulator as per ICAO, EASA, etc standards. The minister for aviation Sarwar khan was given a list by none other than people within CAA Pakistan or PIA about the lack of authenticity of licenses issued by CAA Pakistan.
If there were no ulterior motives, all that was required were administrative measures of suspending or canceling the licenses, instead of embarking on the path they embarked on, which has harmed Pakistan’s commercial aviation industry collectively and not just PIA alone.
There was absolutely no link between the alleged fake licenses and the A-320 crash because both the pilot licenses were in order. It was a deliberate ill thought plan to divert attention toward factors involving CAA that might have contributed to the crash. Over two years have elapsed now and the safety audit which EASA wants to conduct of CAA has not taken place.
The net impact of all this on PIA is that its flight operations into Europe stand canceled and because of that our flights into America. This lack of credibility because of doubts about the veracity of pilot licenses has adversely impacted PIA’s Far-East flight operations also. Almost half the PIA fleet is grounded because of mismanagement by the airline’s team that has been at the helm.
Today both PIA and CAA are being run by ex-PAF or serving PAF officers. PIA fleet utilization has not been impacted because of schedule slashing occurring simultaneously with the reduced operational fleet. However, the average pilot utilization has been reduced. It is the average pilot utilization in an airline that determines shortage or surplus requirements and the need to recruit more.
If the DG CAA was so worried about PIA’s commercial interests, he should be actively involved in getting the ban by EASA removed by facilitating the safety audit expeditiously instead of delaying it. If only CAA Pakistan were to restructure itself by placing more qualified and experienced personnel in commercial aviation at the helm, instead of retired officers.
Regulatory capability requires the regulator to have pilots with ratings and experience to carry out their regulatory functions as flight and safety inspectors carrying out a supervisory inspection of active pilots working in the airline that is under their jurisdiction. This statement by DG CAA seems to be motivated only to increase recruitment in an airline that is technically insolvent and whose average pilot utilization is abysmally low.
