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Bhoja Air Flight crashes on final approach to Islamabad Airport.

some faults cannot be detected with normal equipment under normal maintinance procedures and need special surveys .
 
March 28 2012, not long ago.


World aviation body asked to probe Airblue crash


PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court was informed on Tuesday that government had approached International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to appoint international experts for inquiry into the Airblue plane crash as court had expressed dissatisfaction over the previous inquiry report.

A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth was informed that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had sent a letter to ICAO, which forwarded the same to its secretary general, based in Montreal, Canada.

A senior law officer of CAA, Ubaidur Rehman Abbasi, informed the bench that they were awaiting outcome of their request made to ICAO.

The ministry of defence had last month issued a notification for appointing a board of accident inquiry into Airblue flight accident, which crashed on July 28, 2010, at Islamabad leaving 152 persons dead.

The notification said that the board should exercise powers, conferred o it under the Civil Aviation Rules 1994, and furnish report to the ministry of defence within 30 days.

The court had earlier ordered that the board should be headed by team of international experts and CAA and the federal government should have no controlling power towards the team.

The court was hearing a writ petition filed by former MNA Marvi Memon and some family members of victims of the crash. The bench fixed April 25 for next hearing.

During course of proceedings Mr Abbasi put forward a proposal to the bench that under Rule 283 of the Civil Aviation Rules 1994 a person with legal knowledge could be appointed as chairman of the inquiry board.

He suggested if the court had no trust in the CAA, it could nominate a judge of the high court or a judge of Supreme Court could be appointed as chairman of the board.

Mr Abbasi pointed out that nomination of an international expert would be a time consuming process over which a lot of resources of the government would be spent.

The bench, however, turned down his suggestion observing that it would be appropriate that the inquiry should be conducted through international aviation experts. About the performance of CAA, Mr Abbasi said that recently international safety audit of around 100 countries were conducted by ICAO in which it was revealed that CAA was among top 10 performance-wise.

A counsel appearing for ministry of defence stated that so far the government had received claims of 84 families of deceased persons out of which compensation of Rs500,000 had been paid to 62 families and others would also be paid soon.

He said that the chief justices of Sindh and Islamabad high courts had nominated senior judicial officers for expediting issuance of succession certificates to the legal heirs of the deceased passengers.

:hitwall:

peruvian airforce still uses a 737 manufactured in 1968.
using old planes is normal.
but life span depends on maintinance.
737 does not have a good record as a plane....regardless of who is flying them.

some faults cannot be detected with normal equipment under normal maintinance procedures and need special surveys .

Are you trying to calm us down by your step-by-step details? this function problems, techincal issues, or that?? It look like you are spokeperson, not angry feeling human beings.
 
The airplane was grounded about 12 years ago. It was brought back to the air by Bhoja. Probably just everyday life in Pakistan and especially in influential circle, this was muk-muka.

Its the responsibility of CAA, the airline regulator to check safety of airplane flying the country. But if they can make some money here or there, then they should as they know they have lucrative positions which they dont deserve. The director general of CAA is a friend of Zardari and he is also an active duty pilot. How can a regulator be a pilot?

The tragedy is simply insurmountable. When our parents or grandparents pass away, even after illness, their memory stays with us and its sometimes very painful. Imagine the pain of those who have lost loved ones not out of sickness but perfectly avoidable accident.

Shame on this govt. and those who still have any sympathy for these thieves.

Only after a few days, you will hear it was pilot error. Of course he will not come back from grave to tell otherwise. While CAA and Islamabad airport authorities will always be without blame.
 
Sorry to hear about such a tragic incident.. May the departed souls rest in peace!!
 
Please keep your BS comments to yourself. Pilot and Passengers alike died. This is one sad day!!
 
Please keep your BS comments to yourself. Pilot and Passengers alike died. This is one sad day!!

Brother, people kept comments to self in 2010 air blue crash which is now the cause of this one. Its time for this sleeping Pakistani population to wake up and start questioning our authorities and people responsible. I found these 2 paragraphs on tribune.pk, this analysis pretty much explains to us the cause and can we do to prevent such disasters in future.

Pilots of budget airlines are under tremendous pressure to land at their destinations, because of high cost of fuel, which consumes almost 50% to 60% of their operating expenditures. Aged aircraft with fuselages that have weakened either due to corrosion or metal fatigue require modifications to strengthen them.

It is reported that this aircraft had a defect and must have been cleared by CAA to operate this flight. This particular aircraft had a fuselage whose hull life had expired and should have undergone exhaustive maintenance and modifications recommended by manufacturers Boeing before it was cleared to resume commercial flight operations by CAA Pakistan
.


Analysis: More crashes but no lessons learnt


Families, dreams, and goals have been shattered today, let people show how fed up they have become with the BS people holding top offices. God is punishing us for being greedy, cheap and other people not doing anything to stop this behavior.
 
Political pressure allowed Bhoja Air to relaunch

Shakil Shaikh
Saturday, April 21, 2012
ISLAMABAD: Following the Friday evening's deadly crash of a Bhoja Air's Boeing-737 aircraft in Rawalpindi, nauseating revelations about the relaunching of the airline's operations as a "political favour" have surfaced, The News has learnt.

According to sources, the inauguration of Bhoja Air on March 3 2012 was only possible following the exertion of immense political pressure on the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) resulting in the Friday's disaster.

The Boeing-737-200 crashed on its approach to the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, Islamabad, on Friday evening at 6:35pm, killing all the 127 persons on board. The CAA sources have said that the 28-year-old plane was allowed to commence flights from April 20 although procedures and professional checks were not fully adhered to before doling out a licence to the Bhoja Air as a political favour.

"Flight safety rules and procedures and professional checks were not fully adhered to before doling out a licence to Bhoja Air as a political favour.

"Flight safety rules and procedures were seriously compromised by the concerned CAA officials before allowing Bhoja to operate its flights in Pakistan on different sectors," a highly-informed source told The News following the crash of Bhoja's 737-200, acquired from British Airways South Africa on a dry lease.


Bhoja was presented with one aircraft (Boeing-737-200), while their standby aircraft (DC-9) was never even brought to Pakistan and is currently parked at Dubai - though according to the regulations a full fleet of at least three aircraft with one standby should be made available to CAA for inspection and their air-worthiness and several other professional checks and flight safety procedure should strictly be ensured without any political or non-political pressures.

Bhoja Air's licence was issued following a decade of non-operation of the airlines, and that too allegedly under pressures exerted by one of the top guns of Finance Ministry. Whether he used his connections with one of the top officials of the defence ministry for the issuing of a licence to Bhoja Air is a matter that needs to be probed by concerned investigators. However, it is more or less clear that former Director-General CAA Air Marshal (Retd) Khalid Chaudhry used his powers, rather bullied the CAA acting Director Flight Standards Captain Abid Hassan, currently in Germany, to issue a licence to Bhoja recently joined by one Arshad Jalil, who also has a role in Shaheen Airlines.

"To my information, Captain Abid Hassan resisted a lot but finally he succumbed to the pressures from his boss, CAA DG Khalid Ch, to issue permission at around 9.00 pm some two months back," alleged the source.


The CAA bypassed all standard rules and procedures in granting a licence to Bhoja Air, which Friday resulted in the loss of precious human lives and placed a big glaring question mark on flight safety standards in Pakistani aviation, with people saying that one Obaid Jaoti is the uncrowned king of aviation in Pakistan.

Some sources say that both Captain Abid Hassan and his present acting successor Captain Zafar Mehmood had not even completed their flight inspection courses (FIC), though it was essential that in Pakistan the person undergoing the FIC should have completed at least 5,000 hours as pilot-in-command. In India, it is 10,000 hours for any plot-in-command to complete the FIC. Captain Abid and Captain Mehmood had reportedly completed only a few hundred hours as pilots-in-command, and thus were not even fully qualified to carry out inspections and professional checks of the aircraft.

With such dicey affairs swirling within the CAA echelons headed by a political appointee Captain Nadim Yousufzai, many demand that an independent inquiry be ordered without the involvement of the defence ministry or CAA as neither would dig nor bring to the surface the truth, which is likely to be a primary casualty in this case.

The Pakistan Airlines Pilot Association (PALPA) has been demanding an independent inquiry on many occasions in the past, especially following the crash of Air Blue's A-320; however this request fell on deaf ears, and the subsequent inquiry spoke volumes about the apathy and callous attitude on the part of authorities in Pakistan. "An Independent Board of Inquiry should be constituted to fix the responsibility of such a colossal air crash which [has] left the nation stunned," claimed a senior official.

Many officials have termed Bhoja fight operations "illegal and without observing rules and procedures."Experts opine that there may be many causes for such a crash, though apparently it looks like a micro burst in the CB clouds resulted in the Bhoja disaster.

Both pilots of the ill-fated plane - Captain Noorullah Afridi and first officer Javed Malik -were former Air Force GD pilots (GD-59 Course) and joined Bhoja Air after their retirement from PAF.


[thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-14061-Political-pressure-allowed-Bhoja-Air-to-relaunch]
 
The airplane was grounded about 12 years ago. It was brought back to the air by Bhoja. Probably just everyday life in Pakistan and especially in influential circle, this was muk-muka. Its the responsibility of CAA, the airline regulator to check safety of airplane flying the country. But if they can make some money here or there, then they should as they know they have lucrative positions which they dont deserve. The director general of CAA is a friend of Zardari and he is also an active duty pilot. How can a regulator be a pilot?

The tragedy is simply insurmountable. When our parents or grandparents pass away, even after illness, their memory stays with us and its sometimes very painful. Imagine the pain of those who have lost loved ones not out of sickness but perfectly avoidable accident.

Shame on this govt. and those who still have any sympathy for these thieves.

Only after a few days, you will hear it was pilot error. Of course he will not come back from grave to tell otherwise. While CAA and Islamabad airport authorities will always be without blame.
So this means it was brought back to kill ppl....:angry:
 
Political pressure allowed Bhoja Air to relaunch

If this claim is confirmed, I would suggest that the relatives of the victims get together and file a lawsuit against the owners of Bhoja Air. Keep this lawsuit in media spotlight to make sure no one gets off by bribes.

Sue them for every last penny in their Pakistani and foreign assets.
 
ok.. please dont shout at me.. usually when there is one aircrash it is followed by one more somewhere. i dont know how..
I hope i am wrong.. in countries like pak india and other thrid worl places there is the chalta hai attitude and this is what causes accidents. crashes happne in india also and there is no follow up to that. i guesss this will also be the same.. its futile.
 
This is really sad for the families of the victims, may God give them the courage to pull through these difficult times. RIP to everyone on that flight. Have they isolated the cause of the accident?
 
My Deepest Condolences to the families of those who lost their lives. May Allah Almighty bless their souls. Ameen.
 

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