Flights from Pakistan to the UK and European countries are hoped to resume as the European Union Aviation Safety Agency plans to visit in May or June to assess how far safety standards have improved.

EASA officials will visit the Civil Aviation Agency and Pakistan International Airlines headquarters to review flight safety standard measures taken after a 2020 plane crash.

In May 2020, a PIA passenger plane crashed in Karachi’s Model Colony near Jinnah International Airport, killing 99 people onboard and one girl on the ground. Two people survived.

Initially the pilots and air traffic control officials were blamed for not following procedures.

The then aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan claimed on the floor of the House that out of 860 pilots, 262 had fake licenses. That was nearly 40% of all pilots operating flights on national and international routes.

The same year in June EASA banned Pakistan’s national carrier from flying to the European Union for six months.

EASA wrote to its 32 member countries about alleged fraud issuing pilot licenses in Pakistan and recommended such pilots not be scheduled for flight operations.

The agency did not lift the ban after six months and said it would remain till the safety audit of the CAA.

Multiple visits of the EASA for the audit was expected in 2021 and in the beginning of 2022.

However, this time CAA DG said that EASA officials would conduct an audit which had been pending for more than a year.