FIA makes progress in fake pilots license case

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has made progress in the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) fake pilots' licenses' scandal, Geo News reported Tuesday.

During interrogation, several senior Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) officials admitted to "taking money from PIA as frontmen."

The probe has revealed that the pilots had paid Rs500,000 per paper to get someone else to attempt their exams for them, the FIA said.

It is pertinent to mention here that the dubious licences claims were put forward by Federal Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan in the National Assembly in June of last year after a PIA jet crashed in Karachi.

Sarwar had announced in the NA that of the 860 pilots working in Pakistan, 262, over 30%, had fake flying licenses. He later backtracked and used a slightly different terminology of "licenses obtained through dubious means."

This, he said, had been disclosed during a high-level investigation by a Board of Inquiry (BOI) constituted in February 2019.

After this revelation, the PIA came under strict scrutiny by international agencies and was barred from travelling to the European Union.