KARACHI: The ill-fated Air Blue passenger plane that met a dreadful fate in Margalla Hills outside capital Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board today, had made an emergency landing at the Karachi airport on July 7 due to a technical fault while heading toward Islamabad, sources told Daily Times.
An inquiry team headed by air commodore Abdul Majid formed to probe into flight 202 crash today would especially focus on this incident during its investigation, sources told the newspaper.
The Airbus 321 plane was carrying 256 passengers back then, and had developed a fault in one of its engine, sources said. They added that this information was never made public by AirBlue but it was simply announced that there was a technical glitch in the plane.
An employee of Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) told the BBC that in 2008, one of Airblue’s aircraft had been grounded in Manchester in the UK – he said an inspector had noted a serious fault with the aircraft several months earlier, and the problem had not been fixed.
Raheel Ahmed, marketing general manager for Airblue, denied this and told the BBC that all aircraft in service had been listed as airworthy by the CAA.
“I have been working with Airblue for the last five years and no such incident comes to my mind. I should add that the company has the most up-to-date aircraft in Pakistan.”
Industry experts say the traffic-control protocols and navigation aids in Islamabad airport leave much to be desired also.
“Why was the plane circling at 1,600ft when the minimum for Islamabad is 3,000ft?” a local aviation told the BBC.
Meanwhile, the Airbus team is reaching Pakistan from France to investigate into flight 202 that crashed in Margalla Hills in the outskirts of Islamabad on Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, search is on to recover flight 202′s data recorder, also called the black box.
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