Havelian plane crash: report terms both pilots' licences 'suspicious'

ISLAMABAD: A report on the 2016 Havelian plane crash has termed the licences of both pilots of the ill-fated aircraft “suspicious”, reported ARY News.

The report submitted to the Supreme Court (SC) in a case pertaining to the crash revealed that pilots Saleh Yar Janjua and Ahmed Mansoor Janjua had “suspicious licences”.

Forty-seven passengers, including TV personality Junaid Jamshed, were killed when the ill-fated plane, PK-661, crashed in Havelian while travelling from Chitral to Islamabad in December, 2016.

It is noteworthy that a petition filed by the parents of a pilot, who was killed in the crash, seeking directives for the authorities concerned to punish those responsible for the tragic incident is pending in the Sindh High Court (SHC).

Earlier, a report of an inquiry into the incident 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 the report.

It 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).”

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