KARACHI, March 24: The management of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Saturday succumbed to the weeklong protest of aircraft engineers and sent the head of the engineering department on forced leave. It also agreed to “remove all outsiders” who did not meet the criteria set by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) from the department.

The management sent SVP Engineering Air Vice-Marshall (retd) Iftikhar Gul on forced leave, besides directing two chief engineers and three deputy chief engineers to report to the HR department.

A breakthrough was reached during a meeting between the Society of Aircraft Engineer of Pakistan (SAEP) and a top executive representing PIA chairman Tariq Kirmani to end the weeklong protest which forced the PIA to cancel a number of its domestic and international flights.

As a result of the negotiations, a spokesman for the PIA hoped that all domestic and international flight operations would return to normal from Sunday onwards.

On Friday alone, the PIA had to cancel some 16 flights to different destinations.

The aircraft engineers demanded an increment, removal of engineers and staff, who have no prior experience of working in a commercial airline, etc. They were of the view that the recent restriction imposed by the European Union on majority of the PIA aircraft was not a fault of the professional aircraft engineers but it was due to non-professionals who had been inducted into the department by the management.

The meeting took place at the PIA headquarters on Saturday. Senior vice-president (human resources) Waseem Bari represented the management while Shaukat Jamshed and Mashkoor attended the meeting on behalf of aircraft engineers.

The spokesman told Dawn that the negotiations between the PIA management and aircraft engineers were successful. “Organisational, technical and other administrative issues will be resolved through negotiations,” he added.

Mr Jamshed told Dawn that the management promised to resolve their core issues. “The management agreed with our demand that all external engineers should be removed from the engineering department. It also promised increment to all aircraft engineers,” he added.

He said during the meeting Mr Bari showed them a letter regarding upcoming changes in the engineering department.

Sources privy to the development said the management had planned a 10 per cent increase in salaries of the aircraft engineers.

The SAEP president said that the aircraft engineers had assured the management that they would continue working and try their best to improve safety standards of the aircraft in minimum possible time so that the EU could withdraw its operational restriction on the PIA aircraft.

“The management will review the rest of our demands on March 30 and we hope the PIA chairman will accept our all demands,” he added.