Havelian plane crash investigation carried out under ICAO guidelines: aviation division

ISLAMABAD: The Aviation Division has said that the aircraft crash investigation was carried out under the guidelines provided by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and aimed at improving the safety of air travel and to avoid any recurrence in future, ARY News reported on Thursday.

Yesterday, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) of Pakistan tasked to probe into the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane crash near Havilian in 2016 had released its inquiry report and held PIA engineers responsible for the crash.

The spokesperson of the Aviation Division, Abdul Sattar Khokhar, said AAIB completed the investigation of PIA flight PK-661 (AP-BHO) wherein 47 passengers and crew members lost their lives near Havelian.

The press release read that the air crash was the result of three latent technical factors including fracture of one of the power turbine blades of Engine number 1; a broken pin inside overspeed governor and probable pre-existing contamination inside Propeller Valve Module (PVM), according to the probe report.

Khokhar said that the probe spanned over nearly four years due to its complexity and unprecedented nature of latent conditions. The detailed investigation required keeping all stakeholders on board through rigorous coordination with the respective states and their aircraft accident investigation bodies.

“This report is being released with the concurrence of these stakeholders i.e BEA of France, TSB of Canada and NTSB of USA.”

The spokesperson added that Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan expressed his sympathies and condolences with the families who lost their loved ones during the tragic accident.

Final investigation report

The final investigation report, which was obtained by ARY News, stated that a fractured turbine blade triggered a “complicated” sequence of failures that culminated in the fatal Havelian PIA crash in 2016.

“The dislodging / fracture of PT-1 blade of No 1 Engine occurred after omission from the EMM (Non-Compliance of SB-21878) by PIA Engineering during an unscheduled maintenance performed on the engine in November 2016, in which the PT-1 blades had fulfilled the criteria for replacement, but were not replaced,” according to a report.

The report said that in February 2017, PIA Engineering reviewed the life of the old design PT-1 blades. “PIA Engineering decided to change the soft life as a hard life of 10,000 hrs irrespective of the conditions given in the maintenance manual (an action overboard towards safe side).”

PIA’s PK-661, crashed while travelling from Chitral to Islamabad on December 7, 2016. All 47 passengers and crew aboard, including religious scholar and former singer Junaid Jamshed, died in the crash.

The report said that most probably, the PT-1 blade had fractured during the previous flight (Peshawar to Chitral).

It is pertinent to mention here that PM Imran in May 2020 had ordered to make public all reports on fatal plane crashes that happened in past.

PM Khan had chaired the meeting regarding PIA Karachi plane crash and had ordered to public Junaid Jamshed plane crash report.