The crash in 2016 of a plane of the national carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), which killed 47, was due to a lack of maintenance, concluded an investigation report.
The plane, an ATR-42, which connected the mountainous region of Chitral (north) to the capital Islamabad, had crashed in a remote area of the district of Abbottabad, in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
To read also: Pakistan: the crash of Karachi due to the “negligence” of the pilots and air traffic controllers
The report of the Air Accident Investigation Committee, released Thursday, November 19, indicates that the accident was caused by at least two "
technical anomalies
", including a crack in a propeller blade, and possibly a third.
It calls into question the PIA teams of engineers in charge of maintenance one month before the crash, who did not replace the blade even if “
the criteria for a change were met
”.
Struck by multiple scandals in recent years, PIA tragically returned to the headlines in May when one of its planes crashed in Karachi (south), killing 98 people.
A national scandal erupted soon after, when it emerged that dozens of Pakistani pilots were suspected of having bogus licenses.
PIA was then banned from flying for six months in the European Union and then in the United States.
Pakistani Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan estimated in June that about 260 of the 860 active pilots in the country had a bogus license, or obtained it by cheating on exams.
An investigation into PIA then established that 17 of its pilots had questionable licenses, with seven of them being made redundant for this reason.
A preliminary report attributed the responsibility for this accident to the devolution of the pilots and the lack of responsiveness of the air traffic controllers.
Regarding the 2016 crash, PIA acknowledged that the concomitance of "
three hidden defects
" was the cause.
"
If just one of these factors had
worked
in isolation, the consequences would not have been so devastating,
" the company said in a statement.
PIA was one of the world's major airlines until the 1970s. But years of financial loss, mismanagement and delays have tarnished its reputation.
Between March and November 2007, its entire fleet except eight planes had been placed on the European Union's blacklist.
