PK-8303 crash: Lack of concentration and focus caused the incident, says Ghulam Sarwar Khan in NA

By Web Desk Last updated Jul 2, 2020 80

Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan presented the preliminary investigation report of PK-8303 crash, stating that the pilots were fixated on coronavirus.

Expressing his views on the floor of National Assembly, Federal Minister for Aviation, Ghulam Sarwar Khan stated that the failure on pilots’ side caused the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight PK-8303 to crash.

“Lack of concentration of pilots had resulted in the plane crash,” he noted.

Ghulam Sarwar Khan, cited the analysis of cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data which revealed that both the pilot and co-pilot were not focused and were continuously discussing coronavirus situation as it had affected their families.

Furthermore, the federal minister gave clean chit to the crashed airplane declaring it as fully functional and that no technical fault has been found on the plane during the crash investigation.

Miscommunication between air traffic controller (ATC) and pilot, along with individual failure of both of them resulted in the crash. The ATC did not informed the pilot about the damage caused to the plane’s engines after the first landing attempt, whereas the pilot was unfocused and overconfident, said the minister.

In addition to it, Ghulam Sarwar Khan also revealed that around 40 per cent of the pilots serving in PIA have fake licenses, their appointments are political and they use proxies in examinations.

It is pertinent to know that ill-fated IA flight PK-8303 crashed in a residential area of Model Colony near airport, killing 97 people on board and killing one more person the ground. Two people miraculously survived the crash and had received non-life-threatening injuries