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Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has applied to begin flying scheduled services between Pakistan and Sydney and plans to begin service in just a few weeks.
Reports that the carrier had applied to Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for a foreign air transport air operator’s certificate (FATAOC) are correct, according to Simple Flying.
Sources in Pakistan have indicated PIA wants to begin a B777 service to Sydney from both Lahore and Karachi by the end of March or early April which, as Simple Flying points out, would represent “an ambitious timeline for even the most blue-chip airline”. A Pakistan Aviation News post on Twitter mentioned 14 March 2022 as a potential start date.


No airline operates regular passenger flights between Pakistan and Australia, though a growing number of Pakistan-born Australians, and commercial links, could make an air service a viable proposition.
PIA has encountered a few hitches in recent years. Simple Flying said that in July 2020, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) banned PIA flights to the EU.
“At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) demoted Pakistan to safety category 2, banning Pakistani carriers from flying to the US. The UK’s CAA soon followed suit.”
In June 2020, Pakistan’s aviation ran into serious problems with news that 150 pilots in the country faced being grounded, suspected of carrying “either bogus or suspicious” flying licences”.
More than 30% of civilian pilots in Pakistan held fake licences and were not qualified to fly, the country’s aviation minister revealed at that time.
Pakistan’s Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan told the country’s parliament there were 860 active pilots in the country working with domestic commercial airlines – including the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
In a shock disclosure, Khan said that 262 of those pilots “did not take the exam themselves” to get their pilot’s licence and instead paid someone else to sit the exam on their behalf.
Some of the pilots “don’t have even flying experience”, Khan stated, according to a report carried by VOA news service.
It was reported at the time that more than one-third of pilots working for PIA could lose their jobs over the cheating scandal.
About 150 of PIA’s 434 pilots were carrying “either bogus or suspicious licences,” PIA spokesman Hafeez Khan told the AFP news agency.
“We have decided to ground those 150 pilots with bogus licences with immediate effect,” he added.
News of the scandal broke following an investigation into the deadly crash of one of PIA’s A320s in Karachi on 22 May 2020.
The PIA plane, operating a domestic flight from Lahore, crashed into a residential neighbourhood while trying to land at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport, killing 97 of the 98 people aboard (91 passengers and eight crew), plus a 12-year-old girl on the ground.
The “black box” flight voice recorder was recovered. Reports said the pilots were chatting about the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic when they made their first attempt at landing. They later made another attempt, when the plane crashed.
There is no suggestion the pilots of the doomed airliner were unqualified to fly or were involved in any of the licensing practices that were investigated, but the crash and licence scandal cast a dark cloud over aviation in Pakistan.
As a matter of course, Australia’s CASA checks applications carefully and will approve them only if it is satisfied the applicant is a safe operator. CASA is currently tightening the regulatory requirements related to the conduct of air transport operations by foreign operators and the issue of air operator’s certificates (AOCs) for foreign air transport operations.
PIA hit the headlines again four months ago, with reports that passengers on PIA flight PK-9785 from Islamabad to London found the plane in such a mess, they refused to board. Following publication of photos showing the mess, PIA reportedly appealed to passengers to keep its planes neat and clean.


Written by Peter Needham