Slight decline in air travel to Islamabad

LAHORE: The number of people travelling to Islamabad by air has declined while that to the rest of the country is unaffected in the wake of the July 28 tragedy, The Express Tribune has learnt.

A passenger-plane of a private airline crashed in Margalla hills in Islamabad on July 28 killing all the 152 people on board.

Talking to The Express Tribune, travel agents said that the incident had had a very small impact on the people travelling by aeroplanes. “Bookings to Islamabad have declined while the situation is unchanged for the rest of the country,” Usman Ali, a travel agent at the Davis Road, said. He said that immediately after the crash a few people cancelled their reservations. He said that the closure of express trains could be a reason people did not shy away from air travel.

“We get to book around 100 domestic air tickets on an average day. After the crash we are still booking around 90 to 95,” he said. People prefer air travel to trains when they have to travel long distances. “Our bookings for Karachi and Rahim Yar Khan have remained unchanged,” he said.

Ali Asghar, another travel agent, said they used to book 35 to 40 tickets to Karachi and 20 to 25 to Islamabad per day. “The daily bookings for Islamabad have been between 15 and 18 over the last two days,” he said, adding that the number of people travelling to Karachi is the same. He said that people would get over the tragedy in a few days and the situation would get back to normal.

Pakistan Railways has closed a dozen trains including express trains in the last month. The travel agents said that many of their customers who otherwise preferred train travel now had no option but to travel by planes.

“People still have the option of driving to Islamabad, but for places like Karachi, Peshawar and Rahim Yar Khan, they have no practical option but to travel by air,” Ali said.

Another reason for the fall in bookings for Islamabad, Ali said, could be the perceived safety issue at the Islamabad airport. “The airport in Islamabad is located in a dangerous zone, there are sensitive places including the General Headquarters (GHQ) in its surroundings,” he added.

Salman Saeed, another travel agent, held that after the excessive media coverage of the Margalla tragedy people were wary of travelling to Islamabad by air. He said that they had received some cancellation calls on the day the airplane went down in the Margalla hills but trend returned to normal the very next day.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2010.