The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has stepped up Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) checks of Pakistan International Airways, after uncovering 40 defects on a single Airbus A310 operated to Paris in August 2011. The European Union called the problem "systematic deficiencies" in PIA maintenance.

EASA tagged the French Director General of Civil Aviation office to conduct the random inspections on EASA's behalf. EASA previously imposed a partial ban on PIA in 2007, for what it called a number of poorly maintained Boeing 747s and A310s.