Airport officials in South Korea have asked Vietnam Airlines to review its process of training and issuing licenses to its pilots after they suspected one VNA pilot of acquiring his pilot license ‘inappropriately.’

Suspicion of the pilot not qualified to fly an airplane and possibly using a fake license was raised after it took him many times and great effort to land 160 passengers at Busan airport in South Korea a half of year ago.

The pilot, who is reported to be a South Korean, said he had 680 hours of flight time experience but according to investigators, his flight time was only one hour.

A senior official of Vietnam’s General Department of Civil Aviation (VDCA), who did not wish to be named, confirmed with VnExpress newswire that South Korea’s airport authorities have requested VNA to explain the case to them.

On November 2, Vietnam Airlines said in a report to VDCA and South Korean’s airport authorities that the pilot no longer works for Vietnam Airlines and his contract with the airliner has been terminated since August.

“We are waiting for further report from VNA to bring more light to the case,” the newswire quoted the VDCA official as saying.

“Our training process is very rigorous – it requires a pilot to log a certain number of hours of flight time before he can get his license. However, we are forced to reexamine the whole process whenever an incident like this occurs,” he added.