PIA earns additional Rs10m by commercialising 'leg space' seats

Airline has ended facility of keeping seats for ministers and other high officials

KARACHI: Cash-strapped Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has ended the facility of keeping 'leg space seats' for ministers and other officials and has commercialised them to generate additional revenue, an airline official told The Express Tribune.

"PIA has charged an additional Rs1,000 from a federal minister for (…) the seat when he traveled on a domestic route recently," the official said.

He said PIA had commercialised the seats, also known as bulk head seats. The seats carry much more space than the ones in the economy class.

Now anyone can use them after paying additional charges. "The seats are being provided on first-come-first-served basis including to ministers and other high government officials," he said.

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He said the national carrier was charging additional Rs1,000 for the seats on domestic flights, Rs2,000 on flights to/from Gulf countries and Rs3,000 for flights on European routes.

The commercialisation has earned additional Rs10 million for PIA over the past four weeks despite less people travelling in Ramazan.

"We are estimated to additionally generate Rs20 million a month after Ramazan," he estimated. "We would be earning additional revenue in the range of Rs220-250 million."

The decision to end the facility for ministers was taken at a meeting chaired by PIA MD/CEO Air Marshal Arshad Malik in the recent past.

He elaborated narrow body jets like A-320 usually carry 12-14 leg space seats, while wide body aircrafts like Boeing 777 hold some 25 to 30 such seats.

PIA has 32 jets in its fleet. About 60% of them are of narrow body aircrafts while the remaining 40% are wide body aircrafts.

PIA has recently claimed to have come out of losses at the operational level after quite a long time, as its revenue have slightly exceeded the operating costs in the quarter ended March 30, 2019.

"PIA has achieved breakeven at operational level," Adviser to PIA CEO Air Vice Marshal Noor Abbas told the other day. "It, however, may take 3-4 years to report profit in net."

PIA's cumulative losses and liabilities stands at over Rs400 billion as of these days, it was learnt.