Air Canada has insisted that passenger safety was never compromised after it was revealed that a senior pilot at the Montreal-based carrier was arrested on suspicion of operating hundreds of flights without the proper flying licence.
According to airline officials and the Peel Regional Police, a fraud investigation into the Captain was opened after a random certification check revealed inconsistencies with his airline transport pilot licence (ATPL).
After investigators concluded that the licence was fake, the pilot was immediately suspended, and he was later arrested as part of an investigation that law enforcement has codenamed Project Icarus.
Air Canada said that it doesn’t believe safety was compromised because, while the pilot wasn’t flying with the correct licence, he had undergone and passed regular ‘recurrent’ simulator training.
“Safety was not compromised by this incident because all pilots at Air Canada undergo mandatory recurrent training every six months to validate their flying competency, including a flight check with a certified Transport Canada check-pilot every 12 months,” the airline said in a statement.
“However, appropriate licensing is an essential layer of the airline industry’s multi-layered approach to safety, so Air Canada has undertaken an audit of its pilot group and found no other instances of non-compliance.”
Peel Regional Police are expected to release further details of the investigation during a press conference on Tuesday, and the pilot is expected to appear in court later this month.
In 2020, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) became embroiled in a major scandal after it was revealed that up to 40% of pilots working for the carrier were using fake qualifications.
PIA was forced to immediately ground around 150 pilots – around a third of its 434-strong pilot workforce over the debacle, in what the International Air Transport Association (IATA) referred to as a “serious lapse” in safety oversight.
In the aftermath of this fiasco, PIA and all other Pakistani airlines were added to the so-called Air Safety List for both the European Union and the UK. The Air Safety List is a master list of airlines that are banned from flying to these jurisdictions due to safety concerns.
PIA was removed from the EU’s Air Safety List in November 2024, although it wasn’t until July 2025 that the airline was successfully removed from the UK’s blacklist.
