A new Chairman for PIA

Bureaucracies the world over get a periodic reshuffle and Pakistan is no exception. The latest rearrangement of senior positions takes care of a pressing matter — the appointment of a new Chairman of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). It will be recalled that the previous Chairman Azam Saigol resigned the Chairmanship on December 12^th after the crash of flight PK-661 on December 7^th. He had been in post since May this year and was still ‘settling in.’ The reshuffle at the top has seen the Secretary Civil Aviation, Irfan Ali, given the additional charge of PIA Chairman.

Whilst on the one hand this may give the appearance of a timely response to an urgent need, on the other it is burdening an already busy man with another load to carry. The Chairmanship of PIA is hardly a sinecure as many of his predecessors have discovered, and is more of a poisoned chalice. The problems that the airline faces as he takes up his tenure are multiple, systemic and none susceptible to a quick or easy solution. The chronic problem of overmanning is only going to get worse at least temporarily as the airline sees its fleet reduced by four by the end of December, as four A310 aircraft have ‘outlived their utility’. Add to this the fact that only one of the ATR aircraft grounded after the PK-661 crash has returned to service and there is an obvious problem of there not being enough aircraft to service existing routes.

Those matters aside there is the question of whether Mr Ali is the right man for the job. He is a career bureaucrat with, as far as is known, no previous experience of having charge of an entity that is a business designed to make a profit. He is now tasked with doing two jobs, both of them onerous in their own right. At a time when the airline is facing a raft of crises it would appear that appointing a Chairperson with industry experience would have been the preferable option. Meanwhile, the national carrier struggles on broken wings.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2016.

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