Pakistan International Airline criticized for goat sacrifice
Weeks after one of the country's worst air disasters, Pakistan's national airline is being the subject of criticism after photos of its employees slaughtering a goat beside a plane went viral on social media.
The photos show Pakistan International Airline (PIA) staff butchering a goat next to an ATR-42 plane, which was about to take off for a domestic flight. The incident took place on Sunday, and it is believed to be a ritual to ward off bad luck as it was the first flight taken an ATR plane since the fleet was grounded for testing following the fatal plane crash.
On Dec. 7, an ATR turboprop plane dove into a mountain in a northerner region and burst into flame, killing all 47 people that it carried.
A few days later, another ATR flight had to be aborted due to a malfunction identified by the pilot. This prompted PIA to ground its fleet of 10 ATR planes for close inspection.
In Pakistan, it is believed that sacrificing a black goat will ward off evil.
However, per PIA spokesman Danyal[KR1] Gilani, as reported by Yahoo, the goat slaughter was carried out as a "gesture of gratitude" by some of the company's employees. He was also quick to clarify that the animal sacrifice was not ordered by PIA's management.
Many netizens slammed PIA's goat sacrifice, citing concerns that it breached airline safety standards and protocol.
"This is no joke: #Pakistan invents a new safety measure for its crashing air carrier #PIA," Asim Yousafzai posted on Twitter.
Another Twitter user, Shahid Choudhary, stated that better pilot training could have helped more than goat sacrifice, along with photos showing the ritual.
Before the crash this month, the airline had been enjoying a crash-free record for 10 years. A 2014 analysis of 1985 to 2014 data by U.S. statistician Nate Silver, however, indicate that PIA has had a lot of what he called "near-misses," which suggests that the airline may be high-risk.
