A terrible flight from London

Throughout the flight, passengers kept on moving here and there, with noise levels that kept other passengers awake.

PIA is perhaps the only airline operating direct flights from London to Lahore. It was, therefore, not surprising that it was packed to capacity when I boarded the plane last week. It took off about half an hour late and made it up on the way to land around the scheduled time. This was, however, the only redeeming feature. All else was a mess. The online booking promises more than it delivers. There is a long list of the kind of food you can get, but you only get what they have. And what they have is atrocious, even for ordinary tastes, never mind those with dietary restrictions. Drinks and other goodies were indeed ‘baddies’. Paper napkins were available on demand. This paper scarcity was most visible in toilets that were not properly cleaned in the first place. For a flight of seven hours, pillows were in short supply and blankets were only for children. The lucky among the children who did get blankets got them without covers. They had been used already! The overwhelming majority of the passengers were working class. It seems PIA thinks this class does not deserve better. Some were getting extra attention of the staff, though. It must be the usual bunch of friends and relatives.

A few had an empty seat next to them. The effort that the staff was putting in to keep these as such suggested that they were facilitating travelling colleagues. And, why not! Judging by the large number of staff at Heathrow handling just one flight, there must be a lot of staff travel. With far fewer passengers, other airlines handle multiple flights. At the gates, one noticed a special deployment of the British security system. A lack of trust is apparent here. Safety seemed the least of the staff’s concern. Some two dozen passengers, women and children among them, had been allowed in the plane at the last minute. While the plane was taking off, with seat belt signs on, these people kept on opening and closing the overhead lockers to find suitable space for cabin baggage. In the process, they were running around the aisles. There was no attempt by the staff to stop them. A passenger trying to tell them to wait till after the takeoff was rudely told to shut up. His attempt to remind the staff about their duty only earned a rebuke to calm down. Throughout the flight, these passengers kept on moving here and there, with noise levels that kept other passengers awake for the better part of the night. Some staff was enthusiastically participating in this gup shup. The intermittent announcements to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts due to bad weather had no effect.



Does this strengthen the case for the privatisation of PIA? Not quite. All these are issues of managerial inefficiency. Ownership and management are two different things. Pan Am and TWA died despite being in the private sector because of managerial inefficiency. Singapore Airlines runs efficiently in spite of public ownership. Even Ethiopia has an efficiently running public sector airline. Managements are appointed by the governments or the owners. If the government appoints cronies whose knowledge of operational and financial efficiency is next to nothing, the resulting bleeding of the exchequer has to be blamed on the government. An independent board and management, operating on commercial principles in plane selection, route servicing, seat allocation and staff recruitment is the answer. Of course, the government has to clear the financial mess it created before handing it over to a new board.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2014.

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