Pakistan International Airlines Chairperson Azam Saigol has resigned from his post, six days after one of the carrier’s planes crashed in Abbottabad district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Reuters reported on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the company said Saigol had cited personal reasons as the cause for submitting his resignation.

However, local news reports suggested that Saigol was being pressured to step down from his post because of the crash. PIA, a state-owned carrier, has also continued to deny reports that there was a fault with the ATR-42 aircraft before it took off on December 7. On Monday, the airline grounded its fleet of European-manufactured ATR planes after the country’s Civil Aviation Authority decided to conduct “shakedown tests” of the fleet.

The flight was carrying 48 people when it crashed. There were no survivors. On December 8, Saigol had said the ill-fated aircraft was “fit to fly”. “The plane that crashed on Wednesday was A-checked in October,” he had said. “There is no room of human error regarding fitness certification of the plane.”