Court reissues notices to PIA, CAA in damages lawsuit

KARACHI: A city court has reissued notices to Pakistan International Airlines and Civil Aviation Authority over a Rs14 million recovery and damages suit filed by a Karachi family whose one member died in an accident at an Iraqi airport due to alleged negligence of the defendants.

The 4th senior civil judge of Malir district, Muhammad Ishaq, reissued the notices to the PIA and the CAA for March 28 after the previous ones couldn't reach them due to some technical reasons. The court directed the ballif to paste the notices outside of the offices of these institutions.

The suit was moved by Aseem Sardar hat they had gone to Iraq on a religious family trip and his 94-year-old grandmother, Mrs Nisar Fatima, died at Najaf airport because of the “negligence, malfeasance and inappropriate arrangements” by the PIA in June 2018, causing them mental trauma and agony.

The family claimed that they had purchased tickets for flight no. PK 219 and departed from Karachi to Najaf via Dubai on June 2, 2018 and were scheduled to return on June 12, 2018 through fight no. PK 220. They said that keeping in view the grandmother’s age, they had requested wheelchair service as offered by the PIA but did not get it on their departure.

The service was given on the day of their return as PIA personnel lead the grandmother to an ambulift to lift her to a gate of the aircraft, according to the suit, there were six people on the lift: two from the family and four others, including two wheelchair-bound, the lift malfunctioned on ascension and crashed down from a significant height. Mrs Fatima was seriously injured in the crash and was taken to Al Najaf Al Asharf Hospital where she died on the same day, it added.

The Iraqi authorities “falsely” charged the son of Mrs Fatima, Sardar Ali, with her murder as the defendants offered no help or clarification on what had happened and instead stayed wholly silent, read the suit, instead the PIA told the Iraqi court that Ali had taken charge of the wheelchair which fell from the ambulift and none of their staffers was responsible for this. Ali was later exonerated.

The suit added that the PIA rather provided “false and contradictory” statements to the press in Pakistan that all of the family had gotten onto the ambulift which caused the incident and that the airline was in contact with the family offering them every possible help including covering all their expenses. It said that the statement also mentioned a former PIA CEO seeking a report on the incident from the Najaf Airport Authority, which was never released.

The plaintiffs said that they had had to deal with all expenses for medical bills, return flights all in addition to the mental stress of criminal proceedings as well as having to part with an aged and loved member of the family. They have sought damages to the tune of Rs14,000,000 as compensation for the problems allegedly caused by the PIA and other defendants.