PIA Admits Air Safety Breach, but Denies Allegations of Standing Passengers
Jackie Reddy February 27, 2017
Manchester International Airport, England, United Kingdom - March 11, 2014. Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 777-200 on approach to land.
The carrier acknowledges that PK-743 was over capacity when it departed Karachi last month, but refutes claims that passengers stood in aisles for the duration of the flight.
Pakistan’s flag carrier has refuted claims that a handful of passengers on recent a flight from Karachi to Medina were asked to stand in the aisles of the plane due to serious overcrowding. The incident is said to have occurred aboard the Medina-bound Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Flight PK-743 from Karachi on January 20th.
Pakistani newspaper Dawn reports that the Boeing 777 had a seating capacity of 409, but that PK-743 actually departed for the Saudi Arabian city with a total of 416 passengers. Website IB Times reports that an article published earlier this week by the outlet indicated that as many as seven passengers on the flight were asked to stand for the duration of the three-hour journey. The original item, as published by Dawn, has since been removed from the outlet’s website.
On Monday, Dawn also reported that some passengers on PK-743 were permitted to travel on jump seats and even in the cockpit of the plane.
The paper’s original article, reports the website, indicated that those passengers asked to stand could potentially have blocked emergency exits and also would not have had access to emergency oxygen supplies.
It appears that none of the seven passengers were included on the flight’s digital passenger lists as they were manually issued with handwritten boarding cards. Unnamed sources have also told the paper that the cabin crew had informed the flight deck of the overcrowding, but that the captain left staff to their own devices as the plane was preparing to depart.
However, after having launched an investigation into the incident, PIA has confirmed that allegations of overcrowding onboard PK-743 were found to be true.
A report by the airline confirmed that overcrowding constituted a safety breach, but it has denied the allegations of passengers standing in the aisles aboard PK-743. PIA spokesman Danyal Gilani told the paper that claims of standing passengers are “exaggerated and baseless. It is not possible for anyone to travel like that in an aircraft, regardless of the duration of the flight.”
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Several rows also have additional oxygen masks to cater for lap-children. Although, of course, to be able to use those when the seats are occupied, you would have to be in the aisle!
@jonsg: Their allegation is not baseless - if they put the passengers in cargo area, for instance :D @djjaguar64: Depends which. Vietnam and Garuda are actually good.
What would you expect from a 3rd world airline?
So let's get this right...there were seven more pax on board than there were seats, and yet the claims of pax standing in the aisles are baseless? Where were they? The pressurised hold, for pity's sake? If there were enough cabin crew on board to manage the sold-out flight, there certainly shouldn't have been free jump seats. And, as the article states, had there been a depressurisation event, those seven would be lucky to survive unharmed without access to oxygen.