ISLAMABAD. The Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) resumed hearing into fake pilots issue here on Monday again. Pakistan International Airline (PIA) chief executive officer (CEO), Arshad Malik, informed the apex court that he as PIA CEO has authority to suspend alleged fake license holder pilots and the powers to dismiss such pilots from service lies with Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The CAA top officials, who were present during the hearing, informed the court that the authority was expediently working to complete the process of investigations into alleged fake license holder pilots issue and now, as per direction of the honourable court, the process will be completed on top priority.
The apex court is hearing the issue of fake license holder pilots for the last couple of weeks. The court during Monday’s hearing express serious reservations over the pace of process of investigations and ordered CAA authorities to complete the issue on top priority basis. The issue of fake licenses of some of PIA pilot had surfaced some two months ago when the Aviation minister, Sarwar Khan had informed the lower house of parliament in his speech that CAA has launched investigations into alleged fake pilots licenses and it has grounded 262 pilots on suspicion of having fake licenses. His disclosure turned to be explosive as it resulted in unending controversy over the credibility of licenses issued by CAA to pilots, besides inviting ban of PIA from European Union and United States of America. This was followed by grounding of Pakistani pilots by a number of international airlines. The airlines from across the globe sent the licenses of Pakistani pilots to CAA for verification. The disclose of suspected pilots also raised a storm in Pakistan’s politics. The opposition strongly objected to the government policy calling it defaming the national flag carrier and called it a well-planned government strategy to first devastate PIA and then sell it to its some cronies for peanuts.
CAA is still to respond to the international airlines which have sought from it verification of their Pakistani pilots.