From Zeeshan Mirza
KARACHI: Former deputy chief engineer of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Thursday has challenged ATR plane crash report in the Sindh High Court (SHC).On 7 December 2016, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 661, a domestic passenger flight from Chitral to Islamabad, operated by an ATR 42-500 twin-turboprop, crashed near Havelian.
All 47 people on board, including singer-turned-preacher Junaid Jamshed and the Deputy Commissioner of the District of Chitral were dead. Khalid Mumtaz in his plea stated that crashed ATR plane was faulty from 2013. “Complete data of the ATR plane fault is available.”
The applicant pleaded with the court to order immediate grounding of all ATR aircraft of Pakistan International Airlines. The SHC has served notices to the PIA and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Pakistan and has sought their response on the next hearing.
The final investigation report, stated that a fractured turbine blade triggered a “complicated” sequence of failures that culminated in the fatal Havelian PIA crash in 2016.
