Washington, May 1: The United States on Thursday recorded 29,625 new coronavirus cases, and 2,035 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 1,069,534 and the death toll stands at 63,001, CNN reported.
The novel coronavirus has infected more than 3.2 million people and killed at least 233,000 globally, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Karachi, May 25: The pilot of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA)'s crashed plane ignored three warnings from the air traffic controllers about the aircraft's altitude and speed before the landing, saying he was satisfied and would handle the situation, according to a report on Monday.
The national flag carrier's PK-8303 tragedy on Friday, in which 97 people were killed and two miraculously survived, is one of the most catastrophic aviation disasters in the country's history.
The Airbus A-320 from Lahore to Karachi was 15 nautical miles from the Jinnah International Airport, flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet above the ground instead of 7,000 when the Air Traffic Control (ATC) issued its first warning to lower the plane's altitude, Geo News quoted an ATC report as saying.
Instead of lowering the altitude, the pilot responded by saying that he was satisfied. When only 10 nautical miles were left till the airport, the plane was at an altitude of 7,000 feet instead of 3,000 feet, it said.
The ATC issued a second warning to the pilot to lower the plane's altitude. However, the pilot responded again by stating that he was satisfied and would handle the situation, saying he was ready for landing, the report said.
The report said that the plane had enough fuel to fly for two hours and 34 minutes, while its total flying time was recorded at one hour and 33 minutes.
Pakistani investigators are trying to find out if the crash is attributable to a pilot error or a technical glitch.
According to a report prepared by the country's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the plane's engines had scraped the runway thrice on the pilot's first attempt to land, causing friction and sparks recorded by the experts.
When the aircraft scraped the ground on the first failed attempt at landing, the engine's oil tank and fuel pump may have been damaged and started to leak, preventing the pilot from achieving the required thrust and speed to raise the aircraft to safety, the report said.
The pilot made a decision "on his own" to undertake a "go-around" after he failed to land the first time. It was only during the go-around that the ATC was informed that landing gear was not deploying, it said.
"The pilot was directed by the air traffic controller to take the aircraft to 3,000 feet, but he managed only 1,800. When the cockpit was reminded to go for the 3,000 feet level, the first officer said 'we are trying'," the report said.
Experts said that the failure to achieve the directed height indicates that the engines were not responding. The aircraft, thereafter, tilted and crashed suddenly.
The flight crashed at the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir on Friday afternoon, minutes before its landing in Karachi's Jinnah International Airport. Eleven people on the ground were injured.
The probe team, headed by Air Commodore Muhammad Usman Ghani, President of the Aircraft Accident and Investigation Board, is expected to submit a full report in about three months.
According to the PIA's engineering and maintenance department, the last check of the plane was done on March 21 this year and it had flown from Muscat to Lahore a day before the crash.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pakistan government had allowed the limited domestic flight operations from five major airports - Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta - from May 16.
After the plane tragedy, the PIA has called off its domestic operation.
Islamabad, Jun 24: A plane crash which killed 97 people in Pakistan last month was because of human error by the pilot and air traffic control, according to an initial report into the disaster released Wednesday.
The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane came down among houses on May 22 after both engines failed as it approached Karachi airport, killing all but two people on board.
"The pilot as well as the controller didn't follow the standard rules," the country's aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said, announcing the findings in parliament.
He said the pilots had been discussing the coronavirus pandemic as they attempted to land the Airbus A320.
"The pilot and co-pilot were not focused and throughout the conversation was about coronavirus," Khan said.
The Pakistani investigation team, which included officials from the French government and the aviation industry, analysed data and voice recorders.
The minister said the plane was "100 percent fit for flying, there was no technical fault".
The county's deadliest aviation accident in eight years came days after domestic commercial flights resumed following a two-month coronavirus lockdown.
Many passengers were on their way to spend the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr with loved ones.
Jun 2: Pakistan's COVID-19 cases reached 76,398 on Tuesday after 3,938 new infections were reported across the country, while the death toll due to the coronavirus has gone up to 1,621, according to the health ministry.
The Ministry of National Health Services said that 78 COVID-19 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of fatalities in Pakistan to 1,621.
A total of 27, 110 people have recovered, it said.
Sindh has 29,647 patients, Punjab 27,850, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 10,485, Balochistan 4,514, Islamabad 2,893, Gilgit-Baltistan 738 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 271, it added.
The authorities have conducted 577,974 tests, including 16,548 in the last 24 hours.
The jump in the number of cases comes a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan said that people should learn to live with COVID-19 until a vaccine is developed.
Khan addressed the media after chairing the meeting of National Coordination Committee, the highest body to tackle the pandemic.
"Coronavirus will not go away until the vaccine is discovered. We need to learn to live with it and we can live with it if we follow precautions," he said.
He said the one million volunteers of the government's coronavirus force will raise awareness of the need to follow guidelines.
The government also said that all sectors will be opened slowly after deciding the negative list of businesses which will not be allowed.
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