Seven passengers forced to stand during journey after PIA flight overbooked

A security breach took place when seven passengers were overbooked in a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi to Madina on January 20 and they were forced to stand during the entire journey.

The passengers reportedly paid the full amount for reserving seats in the PK-743 flight but instead of being given the comfort of those seats, they were forced to stand during the four-hour long flight. The airline breached several security protocols when the passengers were overbooked and now a probe is underway to determine who is to be blamed for this blunder.

According to the details provided, PIA’s management, including the pilot, senior purser and traffic staffers are putting the blame on each other for not being careful enough.

The PIA aircraft which was being used for the journey was a Boeing 777 which has a capacity of 409 people, including jump seats, but due to negligence, the flight had 416 passengers on-board.

While talking to reporters, PIA spokesperson Danyal Gilani said that the matter is being investigated and whoever is found guilty, will be dealt with accordingly.

The pilot on the designated flight was Captain Anwer Adil who gave his side of the story in a statement; “After take-off when, I came out of the cockpit, the senior purser informed me that there were some extra people who were boarded by traffic staff. I also noticed that some of the faces were those, who were categorically refused jump seats by me, at the checking counter before the flight when they approached me for grant of jump seat.

They were from flight services department. I had already departed and the senior purser did not point out extra passengers before closing the aircraft door. Therefore after take-off immediate landing back in Karachi, was not possible. It may be appreciated that immediate landing in Karachi after take-off required lot of fuel dumping which was not in the interest of airline,” he added.

He said that after coming back to Karachi, he could not highlight this mistake in the captain’s de-brief.

“It was the responsibility of senior purser to, insure that number of passengers tally with the trim sheet and that if there were any extra passengers, she could not have excepted such extra passengers. She was responsible not to close the door if the number of passengers did not tally with the trim sheet before closing the door.

The traffic staff was equally responsible as they were under obligation to insure that only the passengers as per the trim sheet board the aircraft and there were no extra passengers on board,” the captain further said.

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Posted by fatimaarshad on Feb 24 2017. Filed under Latest News, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.