On April 16, a court in Lahore suspended an arrest warrant which it had issued earlier the same day for PIA - Pakistan International Airlines (PK, Islamabad International) CEO Arshad Malik and three other officials for contempt of court.
ARY News has reported that the court decided to take into account a petition to suspend the arrest warrant until the PIA executives have had the opportunity to respond to the charges.
Malik, Director (Flight Operations) Aziz Khan, Chief Human Resource Officer Subhan Wazir, and Chief Pilot Ali Zaman are accused of contempt of court in relation to their response to an incident of unauthorised in-flight cockpit access. A pilot who allowed a Chinese passenger into the cockpit in 2017 was subsequently fired but later won a court order to reinstate his position at the airline. The four officials are also accused of not restoring the pilot to his job and then not submitting the documents the court asked for.
Meanwhile, Urdu Point has reported that Malik presented the outline of his restructuring plan during a meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan in early April. While the details of the plan are yet to be disclosed publicly, it reportedly includes the intention to grow the fleet from current thirty-three to forty-five aircraft and the launch of 25-30 new routes over the next 5 years.
