PIA to return to Birmingham next month?????
taken from the Daily Telegraph:-
Pakistan Airlines restarts UK flights after ban for fake pilot licences
New service from Islamabad to Manchester paves the way for more PIA travel to British cities
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will operate its first flight to Britain in more than five years on Saturday after a ban triggered by fake pilot licences was lifted.
The service from Islamabad to Manchester could pave the way for flights to half a dozen UK cities, according to Mohammad Faisal, the country’s high commissioner to the UK.
He said that the scandal around the illicit licences, which came to light after a PIA jet crashed in Karachi in 2020, killing 97 people, had been addressed and that “whatever problems were there have been overcome”.
The crash was found to have occurred after the pilots chatted about Covid during the descent, guided the Airbus jet in at a dangerous angle, ignored advice from the control tower and then raised its wheels so that the engines dragged along the runway.
The damage was such that the plane smashed into buildings on a second attempted landing, killing all but two of the people on board and another on the ground.
A subsequent investigation by the authorities in Pakistan found that almost a third of the country’s active pilots held licences that appeared to have been obtained by having someone else sit examinations on their behalf, leading to PIA being banned from Britain, the EU and the US.
Mr Faisal said that mechanisms had been put in place to ensure that pilot qualifications were closely vetted to the satisfaction of UK and European safety regulators.
He said: “We have gone through a rigorous process of setting up a new system, which involves some external examiners and people who oversee the pilot licensing.
“Pakistani pilots are known all over the world, and they are flying planes in all the reputable airlines. They are very sought after. So we don’t have a pilot problem as such in Pakistan.”
PIA has also overhauled maintenance and safety management protocols, with flight crew being retested and certified in the UK.
On Friday, a Pakistani official said talks on technical aviation standards and the resumption of PIA flights were separate from other discussions within the bilateral relationship.
The Home Office said Britain and Pakistan were working in partnership on shared migration and return priorities.
Plans for new services
Having been given the all clear to resume flights, PIA aims to add services from Islamabad to Birmingham within a month and to Heathrow early next year.
Mr Faisal said flights from Karachi and Lahore should also resume soon, and services to Glasgow – serving 90,000 people of Pakistani descent – and Cardiff were in the pipeline.
PIA is likely to be joined by two other Pakistani airlines, privately owned Airblue and AirSial, with possible destinations including Leeds Bradford Airport, he said.
There are two million people of Pakistani heritage living in the UK, plus 40,000 students, who make up to 300,000 return trips between the countries each year.
British Airways has offered the only direct service since Virgin Atlantic halted flights in 2023. However, large numbers of passengers travel indirectly, changing planes in the Gulf, a route that typically requires a four-hour stopover in the middle of the night.
Mr Faisal said the return of PIA flights will also increase freight flows to the UK, especially for perishable fruit and vegetables, helping to pave the way for a planned bilateral trade deal.
In the summer, a framework established three working groups on trade, which should produce “something solid” in a year or so, he said.
The restoration of flights to the UK will also provide a boost for PIA as it prepares for privatisation following a return to profit for the first time in two decades.
PIA was regarded as a major airline in the 1960s and 1970s, with Karachi described as the “gateway to Asia,” before being overtaken by carriers in East Asia and the Middle East.
Mr Faisal said: “It definitely has gone down over the years. That has to be accepted, but it’s high time that we make a turnaround.”
