Life-support systems

PIA has been used as a political ‘favour box’ and allowed to become an albatross rather than the eagle it once was.

The national flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), has been ‘rescued’ countless times in the last decade only to find itself in dire straits within weeks or months. It is chronically overmanned with 776 employees per aircraft against an international average of around 150 per aircraft. Its fleet — those of them actually capable of getting off the ground — is aging and those aircraft that do fly are inappropriate to the routes they ply, which are short-medium haul, that represents 62 per cent of the PIA business.



Billions are lost in ‘perks’ to airline staff and thus far, no government has devised a formula by which this raddled behemoth can be taken off the life-support system. It is now the turn of the PML-N administration to bring PIA back from the brink. The prime minister has announced that there is to be a sweeping new aviation policy within the coming month and a conference of international aviation experts is to be convened in order to hone future strategy by the end of March. The aim is to turn PIA into a profit-making entity within two years, which is nothing if not ambitious.

New fuel-efficient aircraft are to be inducted on a dry lease. They will be four years old or less and consume 45 per cent less fuel. The current fleet of Boeing 777s will be refurbished and used exclusively for long haul, whilst other narrow-bodied aircraft will be deployed on domestic routes. Manning levels will, again, be scrutinised as will working practices. All this sounds satisfactory in principle but it is little different in most ways from every other rescue package that has been tried and failed. There is no indication as yet as to where the money is coming from to underwrite the new leases, nor precisely how many thousands are to be shed from the workforce. The fact is that what is wrong with PIA is obvious to all but the purblind. It has been badly managed, used as a political ‘favour box’ and allowed to become an albatross rather than the eagle it once was. We hope the government will be successful in turning the airline around this time.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2014.

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