Update: The management of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has issued a new set of instructions for its cabin crew after two of its flight attendants reportedly disappeared in Canada in two years.
According to the new SOPs sanctioned by the General Manager of PIA’s flight services, Aamir Bashir, crew members will be required to submit their passports with a station manager after fulfilling immigration and customs formalities and will receive them when checking-in on departing flights.
Additionally, the hotel staff where the crew stays are to ensure that every member checks in at the hotel, and are bound to report missing members to the authorities.
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PIA’s crew members have also been instructed to restrict their movements in consideration of the ongoing pandemic, and no member will be allowed outside hotel premises at night.
This new set of rules comes after PIA’s flight attendant Ramzan Gul was recently reported missing from his hotel room in Canada.
As per reports, the crew had confirmed to the authorities that the missing steward had landed in Toronto on PIA’s flight PK-798.
A spokesperson for the PIA said that Gul had boarded the flight from Islamabad as a member of the aircraft’s crew. He had arrived in Toronto on the flight, after which he had gone to his hotel room at the airport. However, when the flight crew was called back for their departure, Gul was nowhere to be found.
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PIA Canada’s Station Manager has informed the airport authorities of Gul’s unannounced absence. PIA’s administration has also updated the Canadian immigration authorities on the incident as crew members are cleared under the General Declaration, and immigration needs to know if any of them is missing.
Meanwhile, PIA has announced a procedural investigation into the matter.
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This is not the first incident of its kind. Earlier in September 2018, a PIA air hostess called Fareeha Mukhtar had slipped away after arriving in the capital city of Canada on a PIA flight.
Mukhtar had not turned up at the time of the flight crew’s scheduled departure, and the flight had returned without her. When the issue was brought to the notice of PIA’s administration, an inquiry into her disappearance was ordered, following which she was suspended from service.
