Promoting tourism: PIA to start air safaris

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will start air safaris for tourists to promote the tourism industry, said Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) Managing Director Abdul Ghafoor Tuesday.

In a meeting with PIA Marketing Director Dr Khurram Mushtaq, he said that the national flag carrier also restored abandoned routes of tourist destinations within the country.



Ghafoor said that PTDC and PIA were the top stakeholders of the tourism industry and they could play an effective role in promoting the sector. He said that in the past PIA jointly participated in international tourism exhibitions. The PIA marketing director assured PTDC of his full cooperation.

PIA which posted a Rs2 billion profit way back in 2004, has seen its losses surge to Rs103 billion during the tenure of the current Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) regime.

PAC Chairman Syed Khurshid Shah chaired the meeting on Tuesday convened to discuss the performance of PIA and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). PIA’s CFO Nayyar Hayat along with other representatives briefed the members of the committee.



Shah and those present in the meeting expressed their awe when they were told that the national flag carrier has been incurring losses since 2005 which they attributed to bad managerial decisions.

The year-on-year loss figures given to the PAC stated that: in 2005, the losses were Rs4.4 billion that kept increasing over the years. And in 2013 – the first year of the PML-N government – the losses surged to Rs44.71 billion; Rs29.31 billion in 2014, while in 2015, it incurred a loss of Rs29.95 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2016.

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