In violation of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rules, one of its flight inspectors has reportedly been allowed to pilot aircraft of a private airline for the past three and a half years.
Recently, CAA flight inspector Captain Shafqat Mehmud was reported to have made an emergency landing at the Dubai International Airport, while being ‘pilot in command’ of an Airblue flight number 119.
Sources told Pakistan Today that the Airblue flight on July 18 was scheduled to reach Karachi from Dubai when the plane lost one of its engines and Mehmud had to go back for emergency landing in Dubai but Rule 197(II) C of the CAA restricts the authority’s employees from flying aircraft of private airlines as the pilot in command.
“This is gross violation of aviation rules but the authority has been silent over this issue for a long time. Even the Sindh High Court (SHC) had restrained the CAA from allowing Mehmud for flying for any airlines,” they added.
It was earlier reported that the SHC had directed then CAA Director General Junaid Amin to call back Captain Mehmud from Airblue, where he is working as a pilot and violating CAA rules by holding two aviation positions at the same time.
It is worth mentioning that former Airblue pilot Capt M Nawaz Asim had filed a constitution petition in SHC against illegal deployment of a CAA flight inspector in Airblue as line pilot. An SHC bench vide order dated October 30, 2009 directed CAA DG to hold an inquiry against Captain Mehmud’s illegal pilot-in-command flight duties in Airblue in violation of CAA Rules 197 (2) C and Civil Aviation Doc 624.
Capt Nawaz Asim had also written a letter to former CAA DG Farooq Rehmatullah and Flight Standards Director, in which he stated that according to Rule 197(II) C ‘no airline registered under CAA Rules 1994 shall allow any person to fly its aircraft as pilot in command until and unless he [the pilot] is in full time employment of the airline.’
But in Airblue this rule has been violated for the last three and a half years, as CAA inspector Capt Mehmud has been allowed to fly at the private airline in conflict of interest. This violation is deliberate and around Rs 0.5 million rupees a month are paid to the said pilot in terms of salary, as a bargain to overlook poor flight standards and safety violations in Airblue,” he stated.
Taking notice of the letter, former DG Rehmatullah deployed former ADG Regulation Capt Khizar Naqvi to hold an inquiry against Capt Mehmud, but owing to unknown reasons Capt Naqvi was removed from his job before he could finalise the inquiry.
“Capt Mehmud managed the termination of Capt Naqvi before finalisation of the inquiry against him through his lobby consisting of CAA DG Junaid Amin, Ex DDG AVM Sajid Habib and former DDG AVM Safdar Malik,” Captain Nawaz Asim told Pakistan Today.
