After landing in Toronto on Feb. 27, Pakistan Airlines International (PIA) flight attendant Maryam Raza set her maroon hued uniform aside not to board the plane the next day but to abandon her position altogether.
Raza marks being the tenth flight attendant to have gone missing upon touching down in Toronto, according to Pakistan-based news site Dawn.
A PIA spokesperson also told the news outlet that 47-year-old Jibran Baloch disappeared after being part of the cabin crew on flight PK-783 from Karachi to Toronto the week before.
PIA flight attendant Faiza Mukhtar vanished after entering Canada at the start of the new year.
Last fall, flight attendants Khalid Mehmood and Feda Hussain also abandoned their stewardships after flying in from Islamabad on flight PK772.
And last year, another PIA flight attendant, Ramzan Gul, went missing after flight PK-798 landed in Toronto.
Overall, 10 people have been reported to have gone missing on PIA Toronto bound flights.
Toronto police told Now Toronto it could not locate any reports relating to the missing people.
When fellow PIA flight attendants checked the hotel rooms of some of these missing people, they were met with silence.
Along with her uniform, Raza left a note saying, “Shukriya PIA,”meaning “Thank you,” in Urdu, according to Dawn.
According to Arab News, PIA has already conducted investigations into the missing persons, publicly announcing their termination of employment.
They’ve also enforced that flight attendants travelling to these regions must be above the age of fifty years old in order to reduce the number of young air hostesses serving on Europe and Canada flights.
“In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Pakistani nationals attempting to reach developed countries in Europe and North America, seeking to escape challenging economic circumstances through illegal means,” a PIA spokesperson told Arab News.
However, PIA has had its share of struggles in the past.
In 2020, 97 passengers lost their lives while two survived a crash on a flight from Lahore to Karachi, according to a press release.
The airline will continue to seek assistance from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency as well as from Canadian immigration authorities due to the growing number of flight attendant disappearances.
