ISLAMABAD: Search teams on Thursday recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of a Pakistani airliner that crashed into a city neighborhood last week killing 97 people on board, a spokesman for the airline said.
The Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320 crashed on Friday into a residential district of the port city of Karachi. Two people on board survived.
Flight PK8303, from the eastern city of Lahore to Karachi, came down about a kilometer short of the runway as it was making a second attempt to land.
“The search resumed this morning and the voice recorder was found buried in the debris,” spokesman Abdullah H. Khan said in a statement.
“The cockpit voice recorder recovery will help a lot in the investigation.”
The flight data recorder had already been found.
Pakistani officials and Airbus investigators are collecting evidence at the site as they try to determine the cause of the country’s worst airline disaster in years.
Under international aviation rules, French investigators from the BEA — the French air safety investigation authority for civil aviation — have joined the Pakistan-led probe because the 15-year-old Airbus jet was designed in France.
The BEA said in a statement the two recorders would be examined at its laboratory just outside Paris. It issued a photograph of one of them on Twitter showing that it appeared to be intact inside its crash-resistant shell and metal base.
The plane’s CFM56 engines are expected to be a focus of the investigation after the pilot reported both had failed shortly after the plane made an initial, unsuccessful attempt to land.
The engines were made by CFM International, a joint-venture of France’s Safran and General Electric, and are among the most widely used and reliable in the airline industry.
Cockpit voice recorder recovered from debris of crashed Pakistani plane – spokesman
https://arab.news/48p6u
Cockpit voice recorder recovered from debris of crashed Pakistani plane – spokesman
- Says the recorder found buried in debris will help greatly in the probe
- PIA Airbus A320 crashed last Friday into a crowded residential part of Karachi
IMF warns against policy slippage amid weak recovery as it clears $1.2 billion for Pakistan
- Pakistan rebuilt reserves, cut its deficit and slowed inflation sharply over the past one year
- Fund says climate shocks, energy debt, stalled reforms threaten stability despite recent gains
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s economic recovery remains fragile despite a year of painful stabilization measures that helped pull the country back from the brink of default, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Thursday, after it approved a fresh $1.2 billion disbursement under its ongoing loan program.
The approval covers the second review of Pakistan’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and the first review of its climate-focused Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF), bringing total disbursements since last year to about $3.3 billion.
Pakistan entered the IMF program in September 2024 after years of weak revenues, soaring fiscal deficits, import controls, currency depletion and repeated climate shocks left the economy close to external default. A smaller stopgap arrangement earlier that year helped avert immediate default, but the current 37-month program was designed to restore macroeconomic stability through strict monetary tightening, currency adjustments, subsidy rationalization and aggressive revenue measures.
The IMF’s new review shows that Pakistan has delivered significant gains since then. Growth recovered to 3 percent last year after shrinking the year before. Inflation fell from over 23 percent to low single digits before rising again after this year’s floods. The current account posted its first surplus in 14 years, helped by stronger remittances and a sharp reduction in imports. And the government delivered a primary budget surplus of 1.3 percent of GDP, a key program requirement. Foreign exchange reserves, which had dropped dangerously low in 2023, rose from US$9.4 billion to US$14.5 billion by June.
“Pakistan’s reform implementation under the EFF arrangement has helped preserve macroeconomic stability in the face of several recent shocks,” IMF Deputy Managing Director Nigel Clarke said in a statement after the Board meeting.
But he warned that Islamabad must “maintain prudent policies” and accelerate reforms needed for private-sector-led and sustainable growth.
The Fund noted that the 2025 monsoon floods, affecting nearly seven million people, damaging housing, livestock and key crops, and displacing more than four million, have set back the recovery. The IMF now expects GDP growth in FY26 to be slightly lower and forecasts inflation to rise to 8–10 percent in the coming months as food prices adjust.
The review warns Pakistan against relaxing monetary or fiscal discipline prematurely. It urges the State Bank to keep policy “appropriately tight,” allow exchange-rate flexibility and improve communication. Islamabad must also continue raising revenues, broadening the tax base and protecting social spending, the Fund said.
Despite the progress, Pakistan’s structural weaknesses remain severe.
Power-sector circular debt stands at about $5.7 billion, and gas-sector arrears have climbed to $11.3 billion despite tariff adjustments. Reform of state-owned enterprises has slowed, including delays in privatizing loss-making electricity distributors and Pakistan International Airlines. Key governance and anti-corruption reforms have also been pushed back.
The IMF welcomed Pakistan’s expansion of its flagship Benazir Income Support Program, which raises cash transfers for low-income families and expands coverage, saying social protection is essential as climate shocks intensify. But it warned that high public debt, about 72 percent of GDP, thin external buffers and climate exposure leave the country vulnerable if reform momentum weakens.
The Fund said Pakistan’s challenge now is to convert short-term stabilization into sustained recovery after years of economic volatility, with its ability to maintain discipline, rather than the size of external financing alone, determining the durability of its gains.
