PIA troubles

Prime Minister Imran Khan has discussed major proposals presented at a high-level meeting to turn around the financially troubled national flag carrier, PIA. He has directed the authorities to arrange additional guarantees of Rs15 billion as interim relief. A proposal has also been endorsed to freeze PIA’s outstanding dues, amounting to over Rs80 billion, payable to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) along with late payment surcharge.  A special one-off grant of Rs485 million was also approved for domestic repair and upgrade of the flight entertainment system of the Boeing-777 aircraft owned by PIA.

Time and again we have seen how PIA has been saved from closure on the intervention of a well-intentioned government. There exists an annual market of almost 13.5 million ethnic Pakistani origin revenue passengers on domestic and international routes. All we need is a competent and honest management to run the airline on professional lines without political interference. Unfortunately, since 1990, every government has been captive to conflict of interest and has granted traffic rights to Gulf based airlines to the disadvantage of PIA. To add to this is an already surplus staff that the airline cannot lay-off. The first step to restructure PIA is to cleanse it of rotten eggs. It goes to the credit of this management that they have sacked almost 331 employees with fake degrees and 200 ghost employees who were on the payroll of PIA since 2007 courtesy different political godfathers. Apart from airworthy aircraft, reliability of published schedules and a desire to meet customer demand should be a priority. The airline should provide passenger comfort, proper hygienic quality food to the taste of the individual passengers, inflight entertainment and a focus on safe travel while complying with regulatory controls elaborated by ICAO and making sure that both passengers and their baggage are insured for any eventuality. This would help the airline back on its feet.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2019.

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