Airlines Suspend Operations From Peshawar Pakistan
July 9, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Three airlines from the Middle East Gulf Air, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways have suspended their operation from Peshawar airport in northwest Pakistan citing security reasons.
Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George said the three airlines had stopped their operations to and from Peshawar airport”temporarily”.
“The airlines have not given any specific reason for suspending their operations but they have assured us that it will be for a few days only,” George said.
However, an employee of Gulf Air told PTI that the airline had made the decision following news reports that the Taliban might try to target commercial aircraft. The reports said some detained militants had disclosed the Taliban&aposs plans in this regard.
The three airlines will divert their operations to Islamabad airport.
6 Deemed National Security Threat Retain Aviation Licenses
At least six men suspected or convicted of crimes that threaten national security retained their federal aviation licenses, despite antiterrorism laws written after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that required license revocation. Among them was a Libyan sentenced to 27 years in prison by a Scottish court for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
In response to questions from The New York Times, the Transportation Security Administration, which is supposed to root out such individuals, announced that the Federal Aviation Administration suspended the licenses on Thursday.
The two agencies appeared to be unaware that the men were among the nearly one million people licensed as pilots, mechanics and flight dispatchers. They were identified by a tiny family-owned company in Mineola, N.Y., demonstrating software it developed to scrub lists of bank customers for terrorism links.
