PESHAWAR, Dec 20: An inquiry report placed before the Peshawar High Court on Tuesday held inclement weather and pilot of the plane responsible for the Airblue crash which had killed all 146 passengers and six crew members on July 28 last year.

Air Commodore Khwaja A. Majeed, head of safety and investigation board of the Civil Aviation Authority, submitted the report before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Mian Fasihul Mulk.

He informed the court that the control tower had communicated to the pilot that he was violating the no-fly zone, to which the pilot replied that he was turning back.

On a query from the bench whether they had conducted forensic tests for tracing gunpowder on the belly or other parts in the wreckage, the CAA official replied in the negative. Had anything hit the plane from outside, the wreckage would have indicated it, the CAA official added.

On the day of the accident, he said, the weather was bad and two flights had already been diverted from Islamabad airport. He said the Airblue plane had drifted away from its course.

In reply to a question, he said the plane was at least six kilometres from the area where embassies were situated.

Khwaja Majeed informed the court that the black box was sent for examination to France. He said they had also examined record of communication between the control tower and the pilot.

The chief justice put several queries to him about how they handled the black box and what safety measures were adopted. The bench further asked whether the authorities had conducted voice identification tests on the conversation between the pilot and co-pilot, and the control tower, because such things could be fabricated later on.

Mr Majeed said the CAA had followed international standards in carrying out examinations. The conversation taking place between the pilots, he added, showed that everything was normal. He said the last words of the pilot indicated that the aircraft was going down.

The court took exception to the delay in payment of compensation to heirs of the crash victims, both by the federal government and the Airblue, issuing a number of directives.

COMPENSATION: The bench fixed Jan 19 for the next hearing of a writ petition filed by former MNA Marvi Memon on behalf of relatives of the dead passengers, with the observation it would keep tabs on progress in payment of compensation.

The petitioner has prayed the court to direct the federal government to constitute an independent board of inquiry to determine and make public the cause of the crash of Airblue flight ED 202 in Margalla hills.

A section officer of the ministry of defence (aviation wing), Mohammad Qadeer, informed the court that heirs of 40 victims had so far been paid Rs500,000 each as compensation. He blamed the documentation process for delay in payment.

The court directed the federal government to immediately depute a civil judge at Islamabad for issuance of succession certificates and one senior officer of defence and law ministries in the court premises to complete the documentation process within a month.

It also directed the government to pay compensation to the remaining heirs of the victims within 45 days.

The court was informed that Airblue had so far paid Rs5.5 million each to heirs of 66 passengers. The bench directed the management of Airblue to adopt the earlier explained procedure so as to speed up the payment, which should be ensured by all means within 90 days.

In case of failure, the court observed, it would be constrained to issue a show cause notice to Airblue to suspend its flying licence and the CAA would be directed to stop providing facilities to it at all notified airports.The court expressed reservation over the performance of CAA, stating that it had wide powers but had not been looking into the quality of service provided by different airlines.