Over 13,000 Chinese pilots face scrutiny of credentials
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Over 13,000 pilots in China are facing scrutiny of their credentials following a report that over 200 pilots, many from an airline company whose plane had crashed recently, faked or lied about their flying records. An investigation into the August 24 crash of an Henan Airlines plane in which 42 people were killed revealed that bio-data of more than 200 Chinese commercial pilots were found to have been falsified from 2008-2009, a report by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has said. More than half of the pilots who falsified their records were from Shenzhen Airlines, which holds a 51 per cent share in Henan Airlines, whose plane crashed near the Lindu airport on the outskirts of Yichun, State-run Global Times said. CAAC officials believe that Qi Quanjun, the airplane captain who survived the disaster, lacked experience and qualifications. The revelations of forged-resume findings has served only to fuel public outrage about problems and safety issues regarding airlines that have rushed to catch up with booming demand, the newspaper said. Some of the pilots faked their resumes following frequent job-hopping, and most of them have been ordered to stop flying and to sit examinations in a reassessment of their abilities as pilots, the report said. The qualifications of pilots, trainers, repair crews and air traffic controllers are being scrutinised, it said. According to previous reports, China had 13,000 commercial pilots in 2008 and all of their records were expected to be scrutinised. An insider from Shenzhen Airlines told the Global Times that more than 170 pilots from Shenzhen Airlines have manipulated their flying experience. "But only three pilots were punished and suspended from flying, as Shenzhen Airlines was in desperate need of pilots in its developing period," he said, adding that pilots muddled through by bribing officials or through close relations. "It is absolutely shocking to learn story that pilots faked resumes. I don't understand how they could be allowed to operate. Who can protect our passengers' lives?" Song Xiaolei, a 30-year-old man in Beijing who travels at least four times a month was quoted as saying by the newspaper. Another official newspaper People's Daily reported that some training schools, in an effort to make quick money, faked students' resumes in hopes that they could work for airlines sooner. In 2008, a Beijing-based school was fined after it forged 85 students' records. Zhang Qihuai, a Beijing-based lawyer and expert on aviation-safety issues said that the CAAC hadn't done enough to prevent safety problems, thereby threatening the "safety of passengers, the public, planes and flight attendants."
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