New Islamabad International Airport Project

[arshad.altaf]

Aviation division told to form JIT on IIA corruption

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2155639/1- ... orruption/

ISLAMABAD: A Senate panel on Wednesday directed the Aviation division to set up a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe alleged corruption in the construction of the Islamabad International Airport (IIA).

The panel further warned the division’s minister and secretary that a privilege motion will be initiated against them if they fail to comply with the body’s directions.

The directions were issued by the Senate Standing Committee on Aviation on Wednesday as it met in the Parliament House with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Mushahidullah Khan in the chair.
During the meeting, the panel reviewed preliminary investigation reports into the alleged irregularities in the construction of the airport and expressed its dissatisfaction of them.

Senator Mushahidullah, who twice served as the Minister for Climate Change under the last regime of the PML-N, asked whether the Aviation Division had formed a JIT to probe irregularities in the airport. When he was told that the division has not, he expressed his displeasure over the matter.

He said that that Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan had assured the committee that a JIT will be formed to probe irregularities in the construction of the airport.

“Why was the JIT not formed, the committee must be informed about the progress made in forming the body,” he remarked, asking officials of the division to explain the delays in forming the JIT.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Bahramand Tangi, who had originally raised the matter on a point of public importance in November 2018 after which the committee had taken it up, said that they have been asking for answers about the airport for over a year but have yet to receive any.

“If they [officials] do not want to give us an answer, there is no use of sitting before us,” he said.

Aviation Secretary Hussain Nasir Jami said that separate investigations are underway on the IIA, including one by Justice (retired) Shamsul Mulk, General Shahid Niaz and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). Furthermore, the prime minister had formed a committee comprising federal ministers to probe the matter. Additionally, he said that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Special Assistant to Prime Minister Shahzad Akbar were probing different aspects of the airport separately.

At this, the panel’s chairman remarked that the committee formed by the prime minister is not an investigation agency. He added that investigation agencies are neither apologetic nor are they providing any answers on the corruption done in the airport.

The committee’s convener further said that it had recommended forming a JIT to avoid “conflict in findings of different committees.”

Muhsahidullah added that a promise made by a minister is intrinsically a promise made by the relevant ministry and that it is the ministry’s responsibility to fulfil such a promise.

The aviation secretary clarified that they are not trying to cover up anyone’s corruption and that those who were involved in the alleged corruption should be punished for it.

“The ministry [Aviation Division) must give a reply at the next meeting on the formation of the JIT as recommended by the committee and explain if it is not constituted,” Mushahidullah observed, warning that a privilege motion will be moved in the Senate if the division fails.

He added the body has received six extensions to address this agenda item, but it is still waiting for the compliance report.

Earlier, the meeting reviewed a resolution raised by Senator Professor Dr Mehr Taj Roghani regarding the re-employment of retired PIA employees referred by the House. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) officials told the committee that the Supreme Court had banned recruitments in 2018 but the apex court has since been asked to grant permission to recruit 100 former employees, including pilots, keeping in view future requirements of the national flag-carrier.

The matter was disposed of, and the committee stressed on creating a policy on hiring fresh candidates.

In the case of fake degree of employees, the committee was told decisions have been taken on 600 employees while a further 186 cases are pending. Mushahidullah directed to review decisions taken on employees with fake degrees and formed a three-member sub-committee under Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar to speak with PIA’s Review Committee and to probe the matter in greater detail with options for dealing cases on humanitarian grounds.

Restructure in the offing: Plan to split CAA enters final phase

Deliberating over a dubious financial deal of Rs700 million for awarding a contract to install In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems, the committee sought details of the tender along with criteria for prequalification to discuss the matter in its next meeting.

Reviewing an alleged harassment case referred by the Senate chairman, the committee took strong exception over the absence of both, the accused and the complainant. It was stressed that if the two do not appear in the next meeting, a Privileged Motion will be moved against them.

Discussing details of recruitments in the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), PIA, Airport Security Force (ASF) and the Pakistan Meteorological Department in the past three years, the committee directed that details of qualification criteria, testing services, policies for minimum marks and interview details be shared.

[Abbas Ali]

Ninety-percent of Metro Bus System track between Islamabad International Airport and Peshawar Morr and allied facilities completed.

Inauguration of service expected within six months.

Abbas

[Abbas Ali]

Metro Buses Will be Operated by ICT Administration

Islamabad: March 18, 2020

Metro Buses will be operated by Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Administration. This was said by SAPM on CDA Affairs, Ali Nawaz Awan will giving a briefing at Ministry of Planning on Wednesday. The briefing was held with regard to metro bus service to Islamabad International Airport.

Ali Nawaz Awan focused his briefing on ancillary requirements of metro bus project including depot, terminal, command and control centre. He was of the view that NHA will prepare a revised PC -I which will cover all necessary requirements including buses and requisite hardware for electronic ticketing and security surveillance. The meeting was attended by officials from CDA, ICT and NHA.

Source: PID

[murtaza12]

Be prepared for a wall of text. If you're travelling out of ISB, or any other airport in Pakistan for that matter. Give this a read.... or don't.

I'm just amazed at the audacity of CAA and it's strongly worded NOTAMS. Funny hearing them talk about SOPs when they couldn't follow a single one.

A quote from it:

International flight operations shall be conducted in accordance with established guidelines and applicable SOPs.

Travelled out of ISB yesterday. I don't know how many times I can bash this airport.

Arriving at the airport:

At the main entry gate of IIAP, there was a huge crowd of people, at least 200 if not more. Asked the ASF guards and they said it was recruitment for new airport staff by CAA. These people were sitting on the road just before the entry gate. No social distancing, and very few of them were wearing masks.

Got to the drop lane, the rush was significantly less than usual but that's because there was only one flight departing at the time. No social distancing / mask wearing was enforced anywhere in international departures hall.

Some CAA staff were wearing masks, but most were not.

International Departures:

As soon as you enter the terminal building, there are bag scanners and ASF staff. Surprise surprise, no mask wearing. One of them was wearing a mask on his neck, so it wasn't even covering his mouth or nose.

No social distancing at all, everyone was basically stuck to each other in the queues.

The trays to put your phone, belt, wallet, metal items that go through the scanner were disgusting. It was dirty and had some strange sticky stains inside it as well. They were not disinfected or handled with gloves and are just passed around freely between passengers and ASF staff.

Check-in was the same. It seems like EK has crazy turnover of local staff at ISB because they are ALWAYS new. Some incompetent trainee who can't even use a keyboard is left to handle check-in.

How can they trust a trainee to verify COVID-19 test reports and UAE Govt approval to enter the country? As it is UAE imposed strict restrictions on Pakistanis because a lot of our jaahil awaam submitted forged documents because they didn't want to pay for medical insurance or get a COVID test. And here they have a guy who can't tell his a** from his elbow verifying documents.

EK staff and CAA porters who are helping out with the baggage conveyor belts were also not wearing masks.

Immigration:

Around 200 people flying out on this flight. Only one counter open.

There was another guy on a different counter but it was closed and he was too busy laughing and making jokes with other presumably off duty staff.

Immigration officer did not have a mask or gloves.

Lounge:

I had an Economy to Business upgrade ticket so I was not entitled to free lounge access. I went upstairs to go to the lounge. The lounge right in front of the elevator is closed, only the 'Airline Lounge' at the end of the hallway is open.

My bank card allows complimentary lounge access. I was 3rd in line to enter the lounge. The agent was taking everyone's boarding passes and debit cards (for non business passengers like myself). Painfully slow process for such a small lounge. Just charge the damn card and get on with it. The agent took 10 minutes to write up a handwritten slip for each passenger.

Thankfully he was wearing a mask, but no gloves which is important since he was touching everyone's boarding passes + bank cards.

Every second table in the lounge is "closed" as they've got A4 papers taped to each chair asking people not to sit on them.

However people were lining up for food from their pathetic buffet. Rather than have one or two staff members wearing PPE and helping people serve themselves, the buffet was free-for-all. No mask, no gloves, a family with sick kids? No problem, rub your hands all over the food and drinks.

Boarding:

The seats in the pre-boarding area were placed in their normal seating layout rather than have every other seat closed / unavailable. The place was basically full, everyone had relaxed and taken their masks off.

All but one of the EK boarding staff were wearing masks. He was trying to use the PA system to tell people to keep a 6 ft distance between each other but no one listened.

The one seemingly organised part of boarding was that they started calling out people by the row in which they were seated in. However if you've ever boarded a flight to or from Pakistan, you'll know that when the announcement asks for passengers in row 30 - row 40, every single passenger who is NOT in those rows will get up and proceed to the gate.

CAA tried to redeem itself by having a temperature check before boarding. Kinda stupid if you ask me. Maybe have it at the terminal entry point instead of letting the bags get loaded and the passenger get checked in and then suddenly realise he has abnormal temperature. Some matric pass buffoon must have felt really proud of himself for coming up with this temperature check idea.

EK staff gave up and CAA didn't bother enforcing any distancing either. All 200 people were let loose to board like a pack of wild dogs. On the plane it was chaos. People sitting in the wrong seat, people unable to find their seats and so this caused a traffic jam of passengers in both the aisles.

Some of the cabin crew could speak Urdu so they managed to settle everyone down. All was going well until some EK staff and ASF board the plane because they had to offload someone due to some issues with his identification documents, or at least that's what I overheard on the walkie-talkie of the ground staff.

Cabin crew are instructed to not let anyone without a mask to board the plane, but this is CAA bro, badmaashi scene on hai. So they ignored their warnings and EK staff followed by some ASF thugs took the passenger off.

I'll be arriving back in Islamabad in a few days and will share my arrival experience as well.

Thank you for reading.

[rvlhassan]

Thank you sir for your review ! Will be travelling from ISB myself onboard BA in the coming days...will also share my experience...if I come out in one piece

Hassan

[bukhari917]

Be prepared for a wall of text. If you're travelling out of ISB, or any other airport in Pakistan for that matter. Give this a read.... or don't.

I'm just amazed at the audacity of CAA and it's strongly worded NOTAMS. Funny hearing them talk about SOPs when they couldn't follow a single one.

A quote from it:

International flight operations shall be conducted in accordance with established guidelines and applicable SOPs.

Travelled out of ISB yesterday. I don't know how many times I can bash this airport.

Arriving at the airport:

At the main entry gate of IIAP, there was a huge crowd of people, at least 200 if not more. Asked the ASF guards and they said it was recruitment for new airport staff by CAA. These people were sitting on the road just before the entry gate. No social distancing, and very few of them were wearing masks.

Got to the drop lane, the rush was significantly less than usual but that's because there was only one flight departing at the time. No social distancing / mask wearing was enforced anywhere in international departures hall.

Some CAA staff were wearing masks, but most were not.

International Departures:

As soon as you enter the terminal building, there are bag scanners and ASF staff. Surprise surprise, no mask wearing. One of them was wearing a mask on his neck, so it wasn't even covering his mouth or nose.

No social distancing at all, everyone was basically stuck to each other in the queues.

The trays to put your phone, belt, wallet, metal items that go through the scanner were disgusting. It was dirty and had some strange sticky stains inside it as well. They were not disinfected or handled with gloves and are just passed around freely between passengers and ASF staff.

Check-in was the same. It seems like EK has crazy turnover of local staff at ISB because they are ALWAYS new. Some incompetent trainee who can't even use a keyboard is left to handle check-in.

How can they trust a trainee to verify COVID-19 test reports and UAE Govt approval to enter the country? As it is UAE imposed strict restrictions on Pakistanis because a lot of our jaahil awaam submitted forged documents because they didn't want to pay for medical insurance or get a COVID test. And here they have a guy who can't tell his a** from his elbow verifying documents.

EK staff and CAA porters who are helping out with the baggage conveyor belts were also not wearing masks.

Immigration:

Around 200 people flying out on this flight. Only one counter open.

There was another guy on a different counter but it was closed and he was too busy laughing and making jokes with other presumably off duty staff.

Immigration officer did not have a mask or gloves.

Lounge:

I had an Economy to Business upgrade ticket so I was not entitled to free lounge access. I went upstairs to go to the lounge. The lounge right in front of the elevator is closed, only the 'Airline Lounge' at the end of the hallway is open.

My bank card allows complimentary lounge access. I was 3rd in line to enter the lounge. The agent was taking everyone's boarding passes and debit cards (for non business passengers like myself). Painfully slow process for such a small lounge. Just charge the damn card and get on with it. The agent took 10 minutes to write up a handwritten slip for each passenger.

Thankfully he was wearing a mask, but no gloves which is important since he was touching everyone's boarding passes + bank cards.

Every second table in the lounge is "closed" as they've got A4 papers taped to each chair asking people not to sit on them.

However people were lining up for food from their pathetic buffet. Rather than have one or two staff members wearing PPE and helping people serve themselves, the buffet was free-for-all. No mask, no gloves, a family with sick kids? No problem, rub your hands all over the food and drinks.

Boarding:

The seats in the pre-boarding area were placed in their normal seating layout rather than have every other seat closed / unavailable. The place was basically full, everyone had relaxed and taken their masks off.

All but one of the EK boarding staff were wearing masks. He was trying to use the PA system to tell people to keep a 6 ft distance between each other but no one listened.

The one seemingly organised part of boarding was that they started calling out people by the row in which they were seated in. However if you've ever boarded a flight to or from Pakistan, you'll know that when the announcement asks for passengers in row 30 - row 40, every single passenger who is NOT in those rows will get up and proceed to the gate.

CAA tried to redeem itself by having a temperature check before boarding. Kinda stupid if you ask me. Maybe have it at the terminal entry point instead of letting the bags get loaded and the passenger get checked in and then suddenly realise he has abnormal temperature. Some matric pass buffoon must have felt really proud of himself for coming up with this temperature check idea.

EK staff gave up and CAA didn't bother enforcing any distancing either. All 200 people were let loose to board like a pack of wild dogs. On the plane it was chaos. People sitting in the wrong seat, people unable to find their seats and so this caused a traffic jam of passengers in both the aisles.

Some of the cabin crew could speak Urdu so they managed to settle everyone down. All was going well until some EK staff and ASF board the plane because they had to offload someone due to some issues with his identification documents, or at least that's what I overheard on the walkie-talkie of the ground staff.

Cabin crew are instructed to not let anyone without a mask to board the plane, but this is CAA bro, badmaashi scene on hai. So they ignored their warnings and EK staff followed by some ASF thugs took the passenger off.

I'll be arriving back in Islamabad in a few days and will share my arrival experience as well.

Thank you for reading.

This is another extreme. Thinking themselves in a first world country. Criticism for criticism. Doesn't look fine when you have no positives and only criticism. I also travel a lot out of ISB and yes there are and will be problem but this is a hell of a criticism.

[murtaza12]

This is another extreme. Thinking themselves in a first world country. Criticism for criticism. Doesn't look fine when you have no positives and only criticism. I also travel a lot out of ISB and yes there are and will be problem but this is a hell of a criticism.

"Doesn't look fine when you have no positives"

What is this supposed to mean? Did you want me to make up the positive points?

There was nothing positive to write about, the entire experience was an absolute shit show. ISB was terrible before COVID, and now it's just pathetic.

I can understand if they cut corners here and there, but not following any SOPs at all has to be criticised and after the recent tragic event, CAA deserves it as well.

[baberblues]

The airports falling apart lads

[murtaza12]

Arrived back in ISB early this morning.

Immigration staff are not wearing masks or gloves, but there is a glass divider installed on all counters now.

All the passengers took off their masks immediately upon arrival and were gathered around the baggage carousel with no social distancing.

Majority of ASF and CAA staff also not wearing masks, or had it lowered completely so the mouth and nose were both exposed.

They didn't bother enforcing any distancing either, just stood around and watched.

Arrivals area wasn't as bad as usual, but still large crowds and no mask wearing.

[Jetstream1]

Arrived back in ISB early this morning.

Immigration staff are not wearing masks or gloves, but there is a glass divider installed on all counters now.

All the passengers took off their masks immediately upon arrival and were gathered around the baggage carousel with no social distancing.

Majority of ASF and CAA staff also not wearing masks, or had it lowered completely so the mouth and nose were both exposed.

They didn't bother enforcing any distancing either, just stood around and watched.

Arrivals area wasn't as bad as usual, but still large crowds and no mask wearing.

Did you by any chance return on EK612? 612 and a few other aircraft were in holding patterns near the airport today and I'm curious as to why.

[murtaza12]

Did you by any chance return on EK612? 612 and a few other aircraft were in holding patterns near the airport today and I'm curious as to why.

No I was on the earlier flight, EK-614.

612 was in holding due to weather in ISB this morning.

[murtaza12]

Usually EK departures from ISB are from 10R, however this morning we took a very unusual takeoff from 28L instead. Great view of the greenery after takeoff.

[raihans]

Usually EK departures from ISB are from 10R, however this morning we took a very unusual takeoff from 28L instead. Great view of the greenery after takeoff.

Its entirely depends on the winds at ISB, not an airline's choice to depart using specific runway