He holds a licence issued by the American Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that does not include a certificate qualifying him to fly aircraft made by Airbus; a licence issued by South Korean airport authorities that allows him to pilot the ATR72, an Italian-made turbo-prop, and Airbus planes; and a licence issued by Indonesian airport authorities.
All three of the aforementioned pilot licences are real, according to the source.
However, several investigations have found that Kim does not have the 680 hours of flight time experience that he earlier claimed to hold.
But, there was no immediate report of how many hours of flight experience he really has, though South Korean airport authorities claim that his actual flight time experience was only one hour, which isn’t enough to qualify him for his post.
Kim likely used a fake experience certificate to get a well-paying job at Vietnam Airlines, the source said.
Suspicion of the pilot’s lack of qualification to fly an airplane and possible use of a fake license was raised after it took him several tries to land VNA flight VN970, carrying 160 passengers, at Busan airport in South Korea on April 26.
After the incident, airport officials in South Korea asked Vietnam Airlines to review its process of training and issuing licenses to its pilots.
Kim Tae Hun is currently working for an airline in Laos.