KARACHI: A team of the International Air Transport Associations (IATA) has completed an operational safety audit of the Pakistan International Airlines'' different departments after a plane of the national carrier crashed here on May 22 that killed 97 people on board.
The four-member team, which arrived in Karachi on Saturday night, had started the audit on Monday, Daen newspaper reported.
The foreign experts carried out an operational safety audit of different departments of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), including its flight operation, ground handling, flight safety and security and engineering, it said.
The team included a Turkish expert, two Englishmen and another European national.
The operational safety audit is carried out every two years, with the last exercise conducted in 2018.
Prior to the visit, Albert Tjoeng, assistant director corporate communications — Asia Pacific IATA — said: “Following the accident involving PK8303, we have initiated an operational safety verification audit of the PIA. This is the standard practice after an airline experiences an accident or other serious event.”
The PIA's domestic flight from Lahore to Karachi crashed in a residential area near the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi on May 22.
The Airbus A320 aircraft had 91 passengers and a crew of eight when it crashed into the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir, minutes before its landing.
A total of 97 passengers and a girl on the ground were killed in the crash, while two passengers survived.
On Monday morning, the foreign team held a meeting and then visited the cargo area of the airport. They also sought the record of the engineering section of the PIA and other relevant documents for audit.
The team spent a busy day on Monday as they visited the airport apron/ramp area where aircraft are parked, unloaded or loaded, the paper said.
The team remained at the apron area for more than two hours and carried out an inspection of the loading and unloading process. They also carried out the inspection of different registers and emails containing the record of occurrences.
On Wednesday, the team inspected ground handling and technical ramp.