And the questions we’ll keep asking
A PIA domestic flight from Chitral to Islamabad had a tragic crash in the hills near Abbottabad. None among the passengers and the crew survived. The pilot reportedly told the air traffic control soon after taking off that one of the plane’s engines was not functioning. A little later came the panicked mayday call followed by the crash. Besides causing a shock to the families of the victims, the tragic incident has saddened the entire country.
There are a number of questions that need an answer. The most important concerns the state of maintenance of PIA planes. According to the PIA chairman, the ill-fated ATR-42 aircraft went through a detailed inspection in October and was fit to fly. He insists that almost 17 different agencies conduct the safety audit of PIA’s aircraft. How then, could it be that one of the plane’s two engines was found out of order soon after takeoff? Why was the pilot allowed to continue the journey once the complaint had been recorded? Why was it presumed that the second engine would not develop a fault during the flight?
Chairman PIA says it was unclear what caused the crash and that investigations will establish why the plane was unable to fly on the remaining engine. Senator Aitzaz Ahsan has called for a high level probe into the accident. The CAA’s Safety and Investigation Board (SIB) generally conducts enquiries into accidents of the type. Questions were however raised about the independence of the SIB during a court hearing on the 2010 Airblue crash. The Peshawar High Court judge was given an assurance by the federal government that a summary spelling out the outlines of a proposed law for the SIB’s autonomy had been prepared for submission to the prime minister. There are conflicting claims regarding whether a legal basis ensuring autonomy was finally provided to the SIB. In case the proposed bill is still pending before a Senate committee as reported by a national daily, the process to pass it into a law should be initiated urgently.