Suicide bombing on Aviation Industry

The licensing issue as highlighted by our Aviation Minister, an illiterate of at least the Aviation Industry, was not less than the suicide bombing on his own Ministry.

Although the vested interests of a few played the major role in instigating the top offices to link the A 320 crash issue with Pilot Licenses but the top and the Ministers should have some vision and shouldn’t be so much short sighted as they were played around by those who thought they would be the beneficiary of unearthing the so called scam. So called? Yes, how? The issue first surfaced in 2018 and was handled amicably by than AVM Usaid Ur Rehman Acting DG, CAA and 53 Pilots were in fact traced with appearing in some exams in a dubious manner and even they didn’t have the fake licenses.

Out of 53 the action was taken against 28 and an inquiry for the rest was being done and they were also grounded, things were handled in a quiet manner as it was a sensitive issue. Later on we became paranoid to this and God knows what we wanted to achieve and an inquiry was ordered where no professional from the Aviation Industry was involved and the inquiry was handed over to a bureaucrat who even didn’t know the difference between UTC time and the local time what to talk about the aviation industry.

This UTC time has a lot hidden in the inquiry done by Secretary Maritime as those who appeared in exams for example at 10 am Pakistan time and flew at 10 UTC were branded to be having fake licenses, similarly, there is another anomaly in the inquiry that a few pilots have been issued with the notices for suspension on the plea that they were scheduled for an exam on a particular date, however, they appeared in exam on another date. This is very much as per rules as after depositing the exam fee, you can change the exam date within three months, what is wrong in appearing on another date? It was not difficult to check the CCTV footage of the examination center but this observation has also made a lot of pilots to suffer and loose thier jobs internationally, what a mockery of Aviation Industry? I will discuss that once I will scrutinize this inquiry.

Most of the licenses reported in so called 262 license cases have the anomalies of almost similar nature. Which speak of poor judgement by the board of inquiry which didn’t possess the enough experience and expertise on the issue and Aviation Industry itself.

Now let me break the bigger scam here, in 2018 once the issue was first highlighted by an officer of the Licensing Branch of CAA and a team of the same branch uncovered the scam on some dubious exam results which were presented to them. On carrying out an inquiry they found out that there are 53 such pilots whose exams couldn’t be traced to the examination room of CAA as the CCTV footage of the examination room was an evidence that they never appeared in the exams. Their fake exams were traced to an IP address of Jinnah Terminal at JIAP with a fake ID created with the name of a Licensing Officer.

I digged further and it wasn’t difficult for me to find out that it was a gang of a few people running the scam with a Senior Director from IT department of CAA in collaboration with his agents in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Interestingly, these details are available in Licensing Branch of CAA along with the bank account details of an agent who received the money in his account on behalf of the IT Department’s ring leader.

Once non professionals were involved in the Inquiry with Maritime experts doing an inquiry on purely Aviation matter, it was time for the IT guys to create a mockery of the system to create a mess to save themselves. They provided a messed up list so that they could hide the corruption that they had done. Interestingly, a few out of those who were the whistle blowers were suspended, is this the justice?
In COVID-19 situation the attack on Aviation Industry by Aviation Minister can be termed as Super COVID-20, more devastating for Aviation industry than the pandemic as those who were able to retain their jobs even in Pandemic have been fired for example our pilots working for Vietjet and we can’t fly even our national carrier to Europe and USA.

The non professionals appointed by the Federal government who called the shots are ruining the Aviation Industry.

Headless Aviation Industry is turning into a nightmare day by day and bringing bad name to the country, whereas, this industry has a lot of potential for generating revenues and creating jobs. Soon I will write a road map for the growth in Aviation Sector.