Daily Times

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Air Marshal Arshad Mehmood Malik Tuesday said the national flag carrier had become a liability due to mismanagement and corruption.

At a press conference here, Arshad said PIA’s management would develop a comprehensive five-year strategic business plan to turn the national flag carrier into a profitable entity and revive its past glory. “Prime Minister Imran Khan tasked us to revive the PIA as a profitable enterprise. Since taking the responsibility in October, last year we have taken some short-term measures to ensure its smooth functioning and now we are going to give a five-year long term plan in a three-month period,” he said.

Arshad said the five-year plan would undertake measures for cost saving, revenue generation, improvement and expansion of flight operations. “Financial restructuring through government support will also be part of the plan,” he said, adding that revival of the airlines’ past glory was a daunting task.

The CEO said after assuming the charge, he found that PIA was a white-elephant-turned-black-hole due to several issues such as meddling of PIA Union in administrative affairs, corruption, non-professional attitude and overstaffing. “But I also found that PIA pilots, engineers and technicians were the best in the industry and they needed only ownership to harmonize their energies,” he added.

Minister for Aviation Muhammad Mian Soomro, Special Assistant to PM on Media Affairs Iftikhar Durrani and Secretary Aviation Division Shahrukh Nusrat were also present at the presser.

Talking about the cost saving operations undertaken by the new management, he said a strategy was evolved to stop bleeding and cut costs of the national airlines. He said seven loss making routes including Lahore-Delhi-Lahore, Karachi-Dhaka-Karachi, Karachi-Muscat-Karachi, Karachi-Kuala Lumpur-Karachi, Karachi-Bangkok-Karachi, Pakistan-Paris-Barcelona and Karachi-NJF-Karachi have been suspended. “Flights to these routes were causing a loss of 500 million rupees every month,” he said.

The CEO said flight on Islamabad-Beijing-Tokyo-Beijing-Islamabad route was causing a loss of 300 million rupees every month as PIA was allowed to pick only 80 passengers from Tokyo on a 350-seat aircraft. He said rationalization, closure and rerouting of flights was yielding fruits as 200 million rupees would be saved per month.

He said seven profit making routes had been introduced where seat factor was around 95% as compared to the closed routes where seat factor was only 54%. The night landing facility at Peshawar Airport is being restored and soon passengers, including expats will directly land there, he added.

The CEO said PIA was operating a fleet of 32 aircraft out of which six were grounded rather abandoned. The overhauling of these aircraft is being done by our engineers and technicians, he said.

He said around 200 hundred ghost employees had been removed while action had also been taken against the fake degree-holders as per Supreme Court directions.

Describing the non-professional attitude of the previous PIA management, he said that there was extreme lack of interest to run the national airline. Even engines of some airplanes had been removed, while wings and other parts also disappeared, he said. He said the ground support equipment and vehicles, which were getting expired, were being refurbished.

Special Assistant to PM on Media Iftikhar Durrani said as many as 550 international flights were operating per week under the open skies policy in 2008, but unfortunately the number gradually declined to 376 flights during the next 10 years in tenures of Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

Published in Daily Times, January 16^th 2019.