As the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) didn’t share the list of those 264 pilots who alleged to have dubious licences, neither the PIA nor any other private airline has so far grounded any of them, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Friday.

In this scenario, the pilots accused of having bogus licences are still flying the planes, which means the negligence shown by the CAA is proving a threat to the lives of passengers.

Out of these 264 pilots, 150 are associated with the national flag carrier with the remaining 114 working for the private airlines.

In this connection, the PIA has requested the CAA to provide the list of 150 suspected pilots after deciding to ground them with immediate effect. However, it could not make any progress on the issue because of not having even their names, as the CAA has failed to share the list with the airlines.

According to the PIA spokesperson, the CEO, Arshad Malik, wrote two letters on the subject but they have not received any response so far.

The spokesperson said the airline had removed six pilots from service for having fake degrees in 2018 and 2019 after which the aviation ministry launched an inquiry.

However, the airline grounded 17 pilots after an internal inquiry for having dubious licences, he said. “These 17 pilots are grounded for the last one-and-half year but the aviation ministry hasn’t completed their inquiry.”

The spokesperson said the bogus licences were an issue for all the airlines and wasn’t limited to the PIA.

He also made it clear that the airline could not stop any pilot from flying without having the list as the licences had issued by the country’s authorised authority.

The spokesperson also said that the PIA or any other airline could not reject the licences because of being issued by the relevant agency, as he called for provision of list so that they could stop the suspected pilots from flying.