The rapid decline of a once great airline

There was a time when PIA was one of the world’s great airlines. Shortly after it started, it flew its first international flight to London via Cairo and Rome. During Air Commodore Nur Khan’s six-year tenure, which started in 1959, it became the first Asian airline to acquire a jet aircraft, a Boeing 707. Success followed success and new international routes were established. Aviation journals took notice. An English advertising executive, Johnny Metcalfe, came up with the slogan, “Great people to Fly with”. It stuck. Employees of all cadres were united by the vague consciousness of a shared activity — an endeavour to be the best. The fleet was relatively small when compared to some of the European and American giants. But flights took off and landed on time, safety standards were high, passengers praised the five-star in-flight service and there was an aura of sophistication about the head office.

One must remember that this was many years before the imposition of prohibition when educated girls from the upper social and economic stratum of urban society decided to join the airline. During the tenure of Air Marshal Asghar Khan, who succeeded Nur Khan, the famous Pierre Cardin uniform for air hostesses was introduced, which became a trendsetter in Pakistan’s world of haute couture. It was also many years before the reign of the first PPP government that advocated recruitment from the rural areas. PIA was a natural choice. As a result, it had the dubious distinction of having the highest employee-aircraft ratio in the airline business — around 600.

A number of factors subsequently conspired to put the airline in the red, among which were the escalating cost of aviation fuel, the deteriorating law and order situation, international competition, the huge salary bill and the appointment of a series of CEOs some of whom knew nothing about economics. It’s not clear which bright Lucomo thought up the idea of having a chairman and a managing director, each of whom believed he was the chief executive… All it did was double the expense, encourage rivalry and fuel intrigues.

I feel very sad when I read about what is currently happening to the national flag carrier. After 28 managing directors, most of whom were political appointees and didn’t have a clue about how an airline should be run, PIA has become a financial black hole which has sucked up many billions of rupees. The newspapers have been littered with accounts of near mishaps, inadequate maintenance and indifferent service, even rudeness. The recent go-slow strike by the pilots is, of course, the last straw. It has caused numerous delays, flight cancellations and rerouting of flights. But I can’t honestly see any airline chief executive worth his salt agreeing to terms chalked up by the pilots’ association, like the immediate replacement of the director of flight operations, the withdrawal of show-cause notices and inquiries against pilots, the reinstatement of all grounded pilots and the demand that seniority should be determined by the pilots and not the management.



Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, knew what to do when faced with a similar situation. “I will teach you a lesson and get the people of Singapore to teach you a lesson you won’t forget. And we will start all over again.” Well, Pakistan is not Singapore and Nawaz Sharif is not Lee Kuan Yew. As a businessman, it must have occurred to him a dozen times that the bailout-airline has been kept on life support longer than its vital signs warranted. Now that the Senate has got into the act, perhaps it should be given the task of running the airline. It will at least give them something useful to do.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2015.

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