PIA, travel agency officials to come under the scanner

Cases of manually overriding ticket-booking system referred to FIA

KARACHI:

Some heads are likely to roll in a section of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) that has caused billions of rupees in financial hemorrhage to the national flag carrier in the shape of manipulation of seat reservations.

The Aviation Division on Tuesday said it was referring a few cases to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to investigate alleged corruption by PIA officials and travel agents in the airline’s ticket booking system.

PIA uses Sabre’s passenger reservation system to confirm seats through the software specifically designed to reward those who book earlier with a lower price and increase the fare as the date of departure approaches.

Often, airline officials would allegedly override the automated system to book seats against kickbacks, which up till now have only been wild estimates of hundreds of millions of rupees in any given year.

“Due to the apparent manual intervention by certain PIA officials for their illegitimate financial gain, the objective of the system is being compromised,” the Aviation Division said in a brief statement.

Sher Ali, a spokesman for the division, said it was too early to say who is involved in the alleged corruption or take names. “This is a very preliminary stage. We got complaints and we referred the matter to the FIA.”

Stringent reforms

For the past year, PIA has adopted zero-tolerance policy against any reported case of embezzlement or corruption. Explanations have been sought from dozens of employees and many of them have been sacked and suspended.

But this is probably the first time the case of seat reservations where genuine passengers were ripped off is going to be thoroughly investigated.

PIA started using Sabre in the early 2000s following the footsteps of other international carriers, which were relying on computer algorithms to forecast demand on the basis of historical trends.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Aviation Shujaat Azeem  said involving FIA had become imperative to stop this type of corruption. “Firstly, I would like to categorically state that this matter has been referred to FIA by the airline itself. Secondly, no matter how many internal inquiries we carry out, nothing comes out of them. It was time we create a few examples.”

How Sabre works

Sabre basically helps PIA establish a comparison between its reservations and that of other airlines to gain market intelligence on things like which of the flights are fully booked and what is the going fare, said a former airline official, who had closely seen marketing and sales for more than a decade.

Initially, PIA did not have the past trend to go along with Sabre system. So the officials would manually feed in relevant information to get the forecast and analysis. This practice went on for three-four years.

“But once we had all the data, there was no need to override the system and interfere manually,” the official says.

Normally, the officials in PIA’s Central Reservation Control (CRC) and flight in-charges have the access to manual override. “It’s all traceable right to the time and extent of manipulation. As a matter of fact, PIA has made lists of such cases from time to time but nothing ever came out of it.”

Normally, a few designated officials have the code to override.

The manipulation works in different ways. For instances, a PIA official would block seats in advance during the Eid holiday season when the demand is high and then sell them at a commission.

At other times, flight controllers would artificially jack up the number of seats available on a flight to accommodate few passengers on lower fares.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd,  2015.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.