Staff Reporter
Karachi
PIA’s flight PK-661 which crashed four years ago in Havelian and killed all 47 passengers on-board, was declared not the pilot’s fault, according to the final investigation report presented by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Thursday.
The plane had taken off from Chitral around 3:50PM and PIA had said the plane crashed at 1642 local time (1142 GMT) in the Havelian area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about 125 km north of Islamabad.
The 207-page report on the air tragedy was submitted at the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday. The CAA’s report said that the PIA’s Engineering and Maintenance Department was responsible for the air crash and not the pilot as the aircraft met the tragedy due to technical faults.
The report said that three technical faults had been identified which had led to the plane crash and these were: (i) Fracture of one of the power turbine blades of Engine No.1 (ii) A broken/ fractured pin inside overspeed governor (iii) Probable pre-existing contamination inside Propeller Valve Module (PVM).
“The air crash investigation spanned over nearly 4 years due to the complexity and unprecedented nature of latent conditions. The detailed investigation required keeping all stakeholders on board through rigorous coordination with the respective states and their aircraft accident investigation bodies,” said a notification by the Aviation Division.
“This report is being released with the concurrence of these stakeholders i.e BEA of France, TSB of Canada and NTSB of USA.” After the revelations were made clear to the court during the hearing, the bench summoned PIA’s director of safety management to appear before the court in the next hearing.
