ISLAMABAD: The Chitral air crash in which 48 persons lost their lives, including Junaid Jamshed and his wife, could have been averted had the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) personnel reported faults in the aircraft on time.
All the 48 persons on board lost their lives when the PIA aircraft carrying 42 passengers and six crewmembers, and going from Chitral to Islamabad, crashed on December 7, 2016 near Havelian in the Abbottabad district.
During Special Audit of the PIA’s Engineering and Maintenance Department for the years 2014-2017, it was noted that the airline purchased four PW127 engines in 2015 from Pratt & Whitney, Canada. The aircraft, AP-BHO (ATR) with engine PW127, was damaged during a landing at Lahore on May 30, 2009.
Its engine failed in 2014. This aircraft crashed on December 7th, 2016 while flying from Chitral to Islamabad. By the time of crash, it had recorded more than 18,700 flight hours.
It was observed from report of Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) shakedown on the operations of ATR that CAA Airworthiness Field Officers indicated shortcomings of ATR that CAA Airworthiness Field officers management system of PIAC, non-compliance with regulatory requirements and recommendations of original equipment manufacturer of ATR aircraft.
Besides, the CAA report entailed that the health monitoring of engines being the prime data on premature failure of PW127 engines that the PIA had 20 incidents of in-flight shutdown due to high pressure turbine blades failure.
Besides, turbine failures, a number of engines failed due to bearings failure, high (Exhaust Gas Temperature) EGT, surging of compressors, seizure of impellers, breaking of spine shaft of accessory gear box, etc.
Total cases of engine removals were 90 and most of the cases are attributed to all the installed engines, internal conditions of ATR engines by shakedown inspections was also not appropriately carried by the PIAC specialist staff.
The audit required record on schedule of maintenance and history of maintenance of ATR aircrafts and their engines with financial impact which was not produced for scrutiny.
“The audit is of the view that PIA engines and ATR aircraft crashed due to inappropriate maintenance, quality assurance and airworthiness management system of ATR aircrafts - reflecting weak internal controls,” the audit maintained.
Later, the matter was reported to the management on August 20, 2018. The management in its reply stated that as per Pakistan Civil Aviation requirement, engines data was sent to PWC for review and analysis. The PWC clears all engines.
However, the audit observed that the reply was not tenable as it did not provide details of schedule of maintenance and the actual maintenance carried out by ATRs in PIAC fleet nor did it substantiated its reply with the documentary evidence.
The report further said that the principal accounting officer/the secretary Aviation Division, Islamabad were requested to hold a Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) meeting for the finalisation of the audit report after incorporation of management viewpoint but the DAC was not convened by the PAO till the finalisation of the report.
The audit report further detected irregularities and losses to the tune of Rs 20 billion, approximately.
Documents further reported irregular expenditures on repair of aircraft engines without competitive bidding that caused USD 126.8 million equivalent to Rs 12,681.53 million of irregularities.
The management incurred expenditure of around Rs 12 billion on repair of 23 aircraft engines of different make without inviting open tender violationg PPRA Rules, 2004. Besides one of the engine was beyond economical repair and was sent abroad for repair without any coordination and it resulted into wasteful expenditure on its transportation and payment of fees.
Another irregularity reported of USD 5.556 million on the expenditure on exchange of four engines. The audit observed that the management made trade-in agreement and purchased four engines in exchange of PIA's core engines from M/s Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&W) with financial impact of USD 5.556 million without open competitive bidding, hence, violating PPRA rules, 2004.
The audit also observed that seven engines were sent abroad for repair in year 2017, but not received back in usual engine repair time of three months, showing poor operations and financial management.
Moreover, the audit also noticed that the PIA purchased Automatic Test Equipment Complex (ATEC) 5000 on 13th July 2007 for Test Programme Set (TPS) along with necessary items to test Line Replaceable Unit (LRU). The machine was installed on 2015 and it remained idle since 2016, resulting into non-utilisation of machine amounting to USD 1.628 million equivalents to Rs 162.8 million.
Similarly, two engines were repaired at the cost of USD 3.9 equivalents to Rs 39.3 million which later on were declared as surplus/obsolete.
It was also observed that some inventory worth Rs 6.743 million got expired without any use. The expired inventory items were required to be scrapped after write-off approval which was also not done.
It was also noticed that the PIA management failed to recover liquidated damages of Rs 28 million on account of significant delay in receiving back different aircraft engines sent abroad for repair.
The PIAC inventory of assets reflected that it has different aircraft parts amounting to Rs 5,360.20 million which are still lying idle in the stockroom, despite the fact that the aircrafts were de-registered during 2005-2016.
The audit observed that the PIAC failed to carry on periodical inspection and thereby, there is an inappropriate asset management.
The audit also mentioned the unjustified purchase of de-registered aircraft parts to the tune of Rs 226.591 million.
During special audit of PIA Engineering and Maintenance Department, it was noted that the PIA management did not carried out any physical verificaition of stores. Its inventory management is inappropriate as the management is not using a method of product identification with barcode. It was further observed that existing PIA software, PIA online store system (POSS) has not been improved and upgraded since long. Besides, there is no optimum utilisation of services of a large number of IT department employees.
The audit observed that the PIA has failed to carry out periodical inspections and thereby, there is an excessive balance of stores lying beyond the prescribed maximum period. Further, the management has not made optimum use of inventory management software and IT professionals to reduce inventory carrying costs, retrieve information on spare parts - which indicated weak inventory management and poor internal controls existing within the organisation.
While talking to this correspondent on the special audit, the spokesperson for PIA, Abdullah Khan said that on the Commercial Audit Para into air crash, it is the mandate of Air Craft Accident Investigations Board or the AAIB to investigate and report on the causes of the accident as only they have the requisite expertise to do so. They have already published their report. It has now been widely credited that the event leading to the accident were a chain of unfortunate events that rolled up one on another and there is no previous reported event of such sorts that could have led to the development of contingencies or procedures that could have enabled the crew to avoid the event.
On the sending of engines abroad for overhauling and attributed losses, it is the engine's lessor’s prerogative to choose the MRO facility to do so.
Delays can happen as PIA is a cash crunch company and payments have to be prioritised based on criticalities and most urgent need of operational nature. Sometimes the planes are grounded for long maintenance and engine overhaul might coincide with that or planes can be mounted with new or leased-in engines, till the time overhauling ones are retrieved.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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