The real warning sign at the Pakistan International Airlines is not the rise in jet fuel prices. It is the fact that the airline’s new owners are already speaking of possible closure if the present cost structure holds.
Amid global supply chain uncertainty spurred by the US-Iran war, the price has surged by nearly 150 per cent from Rs190 per litre since March 1. Fuel now accounts for 30 to 40 per cent of operating costs, while fares have already risen by nearly Rs 15,000 on domestic routes and Rs 40,000 internationally. For a newly privatised airline to sound distressed at the first serious market jolt is to raise a harder question than the price of fuel itself. It raises the question of whether the carrier was sold as reformed or merely relieved.
That distinction matters. A private airline is supposed to absorb volatility, hedge risk, and reassure the market that it can survive turbulence without immediately looking for relief. Fuel shocks are not freak events in aviation. They are part of the business. Around the world, airlines routinely use forward contracts and other risk-management tools to soften the impact of sudden spikes.
This is what makes the current alarm so unsettling. Pakistan was told that PIA’s privatisation had finally marked a reset. A 75 per cent stake was sold to an Arif Habib-led consortium after the state had already taken on legacy debt and cleaned up the balance sheet. The airline had even reported an operating profit, helping create the impression that the national carrier had turned a corner. Yet the first real external shock has exposed how narrow that recovery may have been.
Pakistan has seen this pattern too often. Public institutions are allowed to decay in full view, taxpayers are asked to absorb the losses, and privatisation is then presented as a rescue rather than accountability. However, the old fragility reappears at the first sign of distress. We need not look further than the aftereffects of the 2020 Karachi crash, which killed 97 people, to understand the long-lasting damage of systematic failure.
The pilot licensing scandal that followed damaged the country’s credibility, triggered international bans and kept PIA out of key European and British routes for years. The recent return to London after a six-year hiatus should have marked a moment of regained confidence. Instead, it has been overshadowed by fresh doubts about sustainability.Fuel prices are indeed a global problem. No airline is insulated from supply disruptions or volatile energy markets. Yet that is precisely why management quality matters. A serious operator does not act surprised by risk built into the sector. Nor does it suggest that commercial survival may be impossible within months of taking charge of an airline that had already been cleaned up at immense public cost. *