It’s not really surprising that many sectors of the industry are taking a severe hit in the backdrop of the pandemic. And airlines are among the first to take a big hit as international as well as local travel has all but slowed to a halt. That is why airlines everywhere are asking for urgent bailouts. If substantial help does not come very soon, there’s the risk of them tumbling one by one. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before PIA, too, was in the news about fears of serious financial trouble. The fact is that the national carrier was a huge financial burden even before the present crisis affected air travel. In effect, it was already bankrupt.
PIA’s problems have generally been more political than strictly financial. For the longest time it has been filled with political appointees often with little or no relevant experience. And since the state was footing the bill, such problems were simply put under the head of hard but necessary political expenses, since this was a novel way of keeping political workers happy. Such trends were seen in all public sector entities; especially in our so called decade of democracy.
That explains why certain administrations sometimes made bold claims about privatisation. A few in the press even called it a no-brainer. Put all lossmaking enterprises on the market, PIA perhaps first among them, and let the private sector make all sorts of necessary decisions that restore the airline’s efficiency and the huge drag on the national economy will be nicely relieved. So far so good, at least in theory. But that is about as far as the exercise seems to progress before being abandoned and then some other government, or the same one at another time, takes up the matter and the same thing happens all over again.
One of the many problems that confronts decision makers is that in its present shape the carrier can only find buyers at seriously throw-away prices. That, quite literally, amounts to throwing away family silver for a nickel. And if you must kick it into shape to put it more seriously into the market, for which you’d have to make all sorts of managerial and staffing changes, then why not make the painful but right decisions and keep running it? It defies belief that no administration has been able to go down that road successfully yet. It’s no surprise, then, that PIA is in serious danger of going belly up this time.
Either way, there’s no question that PIA’s problems are of the government’s own making. And whether it keeps it or sells it off, it will have to make the organisation more efficient and competitive. *