President, Pakistan Airline Pilots' Association (Palpa), Captain Amir Hashmi, has said that pilots did not delay any Hajj flight and the management of the national flag carrier is shifting the blame of its inefficiency on pilots. "We had already directed all our members not to delay any Hajj flight, and all our members followed the instruction to operate the flights, which do not attract CAA's victimisation," said Amir Hashmi.
He said that pilots are caught in double jeopardy, the flights, planned by inefficient scheduling department, exceed flight duty time and are required to be operated by two crew sets which are denied by the administration. If pilots operate these flights they will be subject of CAA's victimisation and their license will be cancelled as is the precedence.
However, the Palpa office-bearers and members are still going out of the way to minimise the hardship faced by passengers, the stubborn attitude of the management is making it difficult even for Palpa to convince its members to operate flights. "We have been trying to talk to the management for three months on the working agreement so it is wrong to say that the current situation has been developed due to the cancellation of the licenses of our two pilots," added Amir.
Both the pilots have moved the court, so there is no point of creating this situation, he said, adding that the management is not scheduling the roaster for pilots as per laws. "The management every time stops the negotiations with pilots by dint of not getting permission from Shujaat Azeem," added Amir.
However, he added that only those flights are being affected we fear penalisation from Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) if we operate them. "We had been painstakingly operating such flights just to save our jobs and our licenses," said Amir. "The fact is the inefficient management has panicked and instead of correcting the ill planned flight rosters, are shifting the blame on Palpa for their sins. Today they tried to fly faulty aircraft but our pilot rightly refused as the lives of passengers would have been at stake due to faulty elevator," added Amir. He added that Pk-729 scheduled from Karachi to Riyadh was saved from deadly accident by its pilot. "The elevator of the said aircraft was faulty so the pilot refused to take off that plane and the engineering department once again made the aircraft ready with same faulty elevator," Amir added.
The fact is, he added, the acting chairman of PIA is director engineering department so he pressurised the department to clear the faulty aircraft for flying. Also, the management forced a pilot to operate Pk-340 scheduled from Karachi to Faisalabad in spite of the fact that the pilot was on leave. "The management woke him up and asked to operate the flight otherwise he would be fired from the job," said Amir adding that taking leaves is pilots' right and the management cannot force them to annul this right. He added that they have been victimised by PIA and CAA for criticising National Aviation Policy. Interestingly, he added, the management has invited all unions of the airline except Palpa for negotiations. "They cancelled their program to invite Palpa for negotiations after receiving a call from an important government official, and now they would try to get favourable statement from all the unions," added Amir. While responding to the allegations levelled by the PIA spokesman against the pilots, President Palpa said they want affairs should be run in a professional manner and as per laws but the management has always adopted haphazard and faulty policies.-PR
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