The national media has reported that the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has finalized the decision to outsource the contract to conduct pilot licensing tests to a British company.
Reportedly, the contract is being granted to UK Climate Investments (UKCI) against six million Pounds Sterling.
The test fee will have to be paid by pilots in British pounds.
However, reportedly a local flying school has protested this move by the national aviation authority, on the basis of test becoming expensive, and has called for a review of this decision by the CAA.
The flying school administration said, “The course is already very expensive, and the examination fee will multiply manifolds after awarding the contract to a British company.”
The decision to grant this comes after the international controversy surrounding fake pilot licenses last year after the Karachi accident.
The controversy began as the incumbent Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan issued a statement regarding fake licenses.
He told the lawmakers during the ongoing session of the parliament that there are 860 active pilots in the country working with domestic commercial airlines — including the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
Ghulam Sarwar Khan said that 262 of the pilots “did not take the exam themselves” to get a pilots’ license and instead paid someone else to appear on their behalf.
This resulted in PIA suffering consequences on international platforms and even resulted in the grounding of the national carriers due to being banned by countries.
FIA has been since then, investigating this case, and several people have been arrested in the past. Many higher-ups were arrested too, including CIA officials and pilots.
Not more than a month ago Senior Joint Director CAA Faisal Manzoor Ansari and Senior Superintendent Licensing Branch CAA Abdul Raees — and a pilot, Malik Abid Hussain was arrested in the case.
It is worth mentioning that the national flag carrier suffered a loss of Rs19 billion on its flight operation from July 2020 to 31st March 2021, due to the PIA plane crash and a subsequent scandal about the issuance of fake flying licenses to commercial pilots.
Read More: Responsibility of ‘dubious licenses’ falls squarely with the CAA, not PIA
PIA officials said that the airline incurred a loss of Rs2.2billion in these nine months as the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) placed a nine-month ban on the PIA flights.