PIA, Pakistan’s national airline, has been roundly mocked after officials sacrificed a goat to bring luck to a plane departing from Islamabad airport on Sunday.
The animal was slaughtered before the take-off of a turboprop ATR-42 aircraft — the same model as the PIA plane that crashed into a mountain on December 7, killing all 48 people on board.
Muhammad Azam Saigol, PIA’s chairman, tendered his resignation last week citing personal reasons.
The sacrifice was intended as a gesture of gratitude, according to a PIA spokesman. An image of the killing posted on social media soon went viral. Imran Khan, the opposition leader and former cricketer, tweeted: “Shocking the depths we have fallen to. PIA was amongst the top airlines of the world & now it is slaughtering goats for safety of its planes.”
Others commented that they would rather see technical improvements to the aircraft than animal sacrifices. Dawn, the most widely read English-language newspaper in Pakistan, had the front-page headline yesterday: “PIA: On a wing and a prayer”.
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The airline said that the sacrifice had been the initiative of staff. Sunday’s flight landed safely in Multan, in the east of the country.