Daily Times

Sir: Our national airline, PIA, has offered a 30 percent discount to travellers to spend Eid holidays with their loved ones — a commendable marketing initiative. But can one really dare to trust them? One cannot even imagine the misery and agony one has to go through in Ramzan when they delay flights and the staff vanishes from departure lounges. The delay one can understand may be inevitable due to a technical fault, the weather or anything but PIA staff vanishing from the lounge area and private contractors asking passengers to show their boarding passes for a sandwich and a paper cup half full of tea is absurd.
Only yesterday one of my relatives had to stay at Dubai airport for hours because the plane designated to take them home “to celebrate Eid with loved ones” developed a technical fault. Imagine my shock when I read a PIA official’s comment in the newspaper saying that these delays were planned due to Ramzan timings and that passengers had been informed a week earlier. What a shameful lie. My relative was sitting at the airport; if this was a planned delay why was he even given a boarding pass?
The first step to solving a problem is to realise that there is one. The PIA’s management should first of all take some lessons in honesty before marketing charming slogans like “spend Eid with loved ones”. It should have read “spend Eid at one of our airports, with or without loved ones.”
FAREED A SIDDIQI
Karachi