ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court ordered the federal government on Thursday to implement in letter and spirit within three months recommendations of the judicial commission constituted to investigate the 2012 Bhoja Air crash.
Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui also directed the government to submit a compliance report to the court’s registrar after the stipulated period ends.
All 127 passengers and crew members on board the flight BH-213 coming to Islamabad from Karachi were killed when it crashed near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport on April 20, 2012.
Also read: CAA challenges commission’s report on air crash
The airline which started its operation in 1993 had to suspend it in 2000 because of the crash and financial constraints.
Families of seven of the deceased had filed petitions in the IHC in September 2012 seeking an independent inquiry into the incident. Consequently, Justice Shaukat Aziz formed the three-member commission headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ghulam Rabbani and asked it to come up with its recommendations in July 2013.
The commission in its report blamed multiple factors for the crash, including improper training of pilots as well as the regulator’s oversight. The 138-page report was based on multiple interviews of officials of the airline, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and law-enforcement agencies as well as an analysis of relevant documents, including an official investigation report on the crash.
The commission noted that the operator Bhoja Air, regulator CAA, flight crew and the airline had fallen short on the tasks attributed to them on a number of counts.
The captain’s insistence to fly through a thunderstorm and the “abnormal behaviour” of the aeroplane also contributed to the crash.
Multiple discrepancies were found on part of the airline. For instance, two months before the crash a CAA officer informed his superiors that the airline was “physically bankrupt” with a negative equity of Rs8.1 million.
Additionally, the report said, the condition to have at least three aircraft on dry lease for a start-up airline was not followed as one of the planes, DC9-32, was inducted on wet lease, which was normally used as a temporary arrangement.
A major oversight also related to the ill-fated flight’s captain, Noorullah Afridi, who was found to be below-par in 55 per cent of the essential exercises during the Flight Simulator Proficiency Check in January 2012.
The commission regretted that the Bhoja Air management did not even incorporate the Boeing-recommended flight procedures, leaving the crew to follow the procedures of the older variant of the jet.
“The failure on part of the operator Bhoja Air in knowing well the aeroplanes that it brought to operate in the country resulted in absence of required ground and flight training and documentation for the flight crew,” the commission said.
The report regretted that while the weather was fine in Islamabad when the flight took off from Karachi on the evening of April 20, 2012, the Met department reported a thunderstorm over the Benazir Bhutto airport an hour later. This should have been communicated to the flight crew by Bhoja Air’s dispatch service, which keeps track of weather at destination and alternative airports.
Transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recorder revealed that the captain had taken a casual approach towards adverse weather condition and was bent upon landing in Islamabad.
That was the most important factor contributing to the accident, the commission noted.
Analysis of the last three minutes of the flight when it encountered wind shear, an adverse weather condition, reflected unfamiliarity of the crew with automated flight deck of the aircraft as it did not follow the standard procedure, the report said.
Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2015
