October 31, (THEWILL) – Tributes have been paid to an airline pilot who captained the first Emirates flight in October 1985.
Fazle Ghani, who died in Pakistan following a long illness, flew the carrier’s inaugural service to Karachi 36 years ago alongside Captain Ejaz Ul Haq.
The pilots and about 100 personnel were seconded from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to help the emirate set up its now famous airline.
Arshad Malik, chief executive officer of PIA, announced the news of Ghani’s death on Saturday.
“Pride of Pakistan, aviation Capt Fazle Ghani, passed away after a prolonged illness”, he wrote.
“On the 18th of October a group of 100 pilots, flight and aircraft engineers, maintenance staff, among others, all came to Dubai to initiate the planning stages, and we began test flights from then on to ensure everything would operate to plan”, Ghani had said of the inaugural EK600 flight in a previous interview.
The first flight took off at about 11.45am from Dubai. Two other flights bound for Mumbai and Delhi took off the same day.
After helping to set up Emirates and the airline’s first pilots, Ghani took the decision to return to PIA.
“I was also tasked to train UAE national pilots. They were trained in Dubai and got their commercial licenses from the Civil Aviation Authority in Pakistan.
“We had some great memories from the first flight. We pushed back and took off on time, and this signalled a great achievement for the airline in such a short period of time”, Ghani added.
The Pakistani pilot went to Dubai in October 1985 where he met the top government and airline officials to discuss the launch of the airline. He was tasked to train UAE pilots who “were trained in Dubai and got their commercial licenses from the Civil Aviation Authority in Pakistan”.
Captain Ghani was invited as the special guest at the ceremony when Emirates A380 flight EK-2524 landed at Islamabad International Airport in 2018, marking the first time ever that a double-decker aircraft landed in Pakistan.
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