Pakistani Pilots: Fake Licenses

We’ve all seen the ongoing news headlines with the pilots in Pakistan having ‘fake licenses’. Let’s delve into understanding first what exactly they mean by 'fake’ licenses and then how they come about having them and the implications they have. 

These 'fake’ licenses should instead be called unlawfully acquired licenses because a fake license would be one that is fake in itself, printed at home by oneself and passed off as being legitimate. The licenses held by these pilots were not fake per se rather issued to them by the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan and it is entirely on them to provide licenses to people who aren’t qualified, just to earn some side money on top. Is human life really worth risking for those few bucks? Furthermore, here’s a quick review to understand how one would obtain such a license. There’s different exams that you have to achieve a minimum of 70% in to be able to receive a license. Different licenses such as CPL, ATPL, PPL have different exams. Some people who manage to pass a few of the exams but are unable to pass the rest usually pay someone else to either take the exams for them or bribe the authority personnel conducting the exams to issue the license and write off the exams as being passed. 

Now that we’ve understood how these licenses are procured, let’s discuss the implications caused by this neglect. The government recently put out a list which contained the names of all the pilots who had acquired these fake licenses so that they could be brought to justice. However, it was soon realised that the list was full of inaccuracies; many of the pilots on it had either retired or passed away, a few had even passed away in recent airplane crashes such as the two pilots who had lost their lives in the 2016 ATR plane crash. Also, in 2018, a pilot was involved in a crash landing and when looked into his credentials recently, it was found that the date of the test listed on his license was a holiday making it impossible for him to give the test on that day. Which brings me to the point: there were pilots on that list that had been in an airplane crash where they had lost their life along with hundreds of innocents or involved in crash landings where they had risked so many lives on board amongst their own. These pilots had acquired their licenses by unlawful means, licenses for which they were not qualified, flying a plane for which they were clearly not eligible risking not only their lives but also the lives of hundreds of innocent people whose only fault was to get on a plane being flown by an unlicensed pilot. This begs the question: where is the accountability? Those pilots cannot be brought to justice since they already died. However, the families that were broken due to the people dying on that flight remain that way and there is no justice for them. The CAA is now trying to cover their tracks by saying all licenses issued by them are genuine contradicting the aviation ministers statement about 30% of the pilots being fake. This goes to show that there is absolutely no accountability for one’s wrongdoings. 

Moving on from personal implications, we also saw that the United Kingdom and European Union followed by USA and Malaysia recently banned PIA from operating any flights in the region. Vietnam, Turkey and UAE suspended all the Pakistani pilots working for their airlines regardless of whether their names were on the list or not. This whole issue had a negative impact on honest and truthful pilots as well making it hard for them to earn a living because of a mistake someone else had committed. The amount of international backlash received caused colossal damage to the country's reputation as well as economy after it was announced that around 30% of the pilots have fake licenses which amounts to approximately 262 out of 860 total pilots in Pakistan. That’s around 260 different planes being flown by illegitimate pilots putting more than thousands of peoples lives at risk and if that doesn’t speak volumes about the state this country is in, I don't know what does. 

The sad part is no matter how much we may raise our voices against it, no matter how much we want to boycott the airlines that endorse this behavior and no matter how much we strive for change, there's only a small extent to which we can go to because we can never know for sure whether the plane we get on is flown by a legitimately licensed pilot or not. It's deeply upsetting to say the least to see the very government and its organisations that we put our trust into continue to disappoint us like this. Even though now steps have been taken on an international level forcing PIA to suspend approximately 150 of its pilots and we can hope for a better future, there is still no accountability for lives that have already been lost and families that have already been broken.