KARACHI: Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) has appeared ineffective to comply with the audit observations raised by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) during its Universal Safety Oversight Audit (USOAP) in 2011.
The authority's inability to ensure the compliance of safety audit observations even after the lapse of nine years was noticed by Business Recorder (BR) after receiving an email from William Raillant-Clark, communications officer, ICAO in response to the recent news story “ICAO postpones USOAP of PCAA: PIA to wait until 2021 to resume US, UK and EU operations.”
Communications officer, ICAO apprised the paper that universal safety oversight audit was postponed on the request of PCAA prior to the pandemic.
However, BR news item stated that the ICAO team has postponed its trip to Pakistan for USOAP of PCAA till next year, due to COVID-19 pandemic, which was wrongly communicated by a senior official, in PCAA.
Consequently, BR discussed the issue in reference to that email with several PCAA officials, including the senior official who was responsible for miscommunication with the paper.
As a result, they admitted the failure of PCAA to comply with audit observations raised by the ICAO during its USOAP in 2011. They also described the case of fake pilot licenses as another major reason that compelled PCAA to request ICAO to postpone its USOAP till next year.
In addition, BR in its story wrote the viewpoint of PIA senior officials, who believed that without ICAO’s positive audit report, PIA could not resume its operations for the US, the UK and the EU even after a six months ban and the positive interim report of Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) by International Air Transport Association (IATA) because ICAO's positive audit report would act as a catalyst in the process of resumption of PIA flight operations to the aforesaid destinations, which was misunderstood by ICAO.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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