Pakistan's national airline is banned from flying to the EU

The VET announced last week that it would immediately ban 141 of the airline’s 434 pilots because a government inspection had found that the pilots had obtained forged licenses or passed examinations, allowing others to pass them in their place.

The EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has informed VET that it is unsure whether the remaining pilots are properly qualified and said it has lost confidence in VET, an airline spokesman told AFP.

According to an inspection conducted by the Pakistani government last year, the details of which were made public last week, 262 of Pakistan’s 860 active pilots have forged licenses or failed exams. More than half of such pilots were from VET.

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EASA has announced a ban on VET flights to the EU and another smaller Pakistani private airline, Vision Air International, due to these findings.

The VET fleet has 31 aircraft and employs around 14,500 people.

Due to the new coronavirus pandemic, VET has made fewer international flights in recent months. However, the airline recently resumed selling tickets to five European cities, including Paris, Milan and Barcelona.

On May 22, the VET plane crash took place in Karachi.

Authorities in the plane crash, which killed 98 people, blamed both pilots of the Airbus 320 liner, who even spoke a coronavirus during the landing and forgot to release the plane’s wheels.