Lack of coordination causes flight delays, jeopardises air safety

Lack of co-ordination among different departments of Pakistan International Airlines not only results in flight delays but also jeopardises air safety, according to official documents available here. On July 13, PIA operated PK-302 from Karachi to Lahore with major air safety violations owing to the lack of co-ordination between its engineering and cargo departments.
Documents show that the engineering department at Karachi airport intentionally cleared the flight that had a snag. This aircraft had a worn out tyre and threads were visible on a wheel. The snag was reported but the ground engineer in-charge cleared the snag saying "found satisfactory for this flight". This tantamount to intentionally putting the safety of aircraft in jeopardy, a well informed source told Business Recorder here on Thursday.
As if that snag was not enough. PIA's cargo department played its role by overburdening the flight and reported wrong figures about the actual weight. "The take-off gross weight (TOGW) was reported around 290 tons at Karachi but at the time of takeoff the aircraft was heavier by at least by 10 tons while taking off at Velocity 2 (V-2) instead of Velocity 1 (V-1)".
Aviation experts say that an aircraft can easily take off at V-1 speed with normal weight, but using V-2 means that the aircraft is heavily loaded and will cover more than required area of runway which could be very dangerous. "The aircraft had to use full cruise thrust as the required speed was not achieved. It is serious flight safety issue," said an official report. It further mentioned that on trim sheet the load in compartment, other than passenger/cabin baggage was shown as 22.57 tons, however the pallets of mangoes were in quite a large number and probably their weight was erroneously shown less.
It appears the report said that the cargo department at Karachi airport did this intentionally as the airline staff observed in Lahore after landing that one fully loaded pallet with high density weight of mangoes was showing only 700 kilograms. Only for few pennies, the source said the airline ground staff put the aircraft and passenger safety at risk which should not only be noticed but those responsible should be immediately fired.