PALPA demands reassessment of pilot contract procedure

KARACHI: The Pakistan Airline Pilots' Association (PALPA) has lodged its protest with the PIA board over the adopted procedure to offer contracts to pilots and requested review before upcoming meeting on July 25th, 2015.
President Palpa Captain Amir Hashmi and Secretary Palpa Captain Sohail Ahmed in a letter to the board said the rulings of the Supreme Court on the subject have also been completely disregarded.
“No approval has been granted by the Establishment Division and no approval has been solicited from the prime minister as required under the rules for the consideration of the board with regards to the contract offer to the pilots,” alleged Palpa.
The matter was not revealed to the HR committee of Pakistan International Airlines Corporation, whose approval is a prerequisite, for putting up cases with the board for consideration.
Similarly, the bindings of ESTA code pertaining to contract employment in government/semi-government organizations/autonomous bodies have been disregarded, letter further stated.
The letter mentioned that the queries of the HR committee raised when the case was previously brought before board are still unaddressed till date.
“The flight operations management is portraying an acute shortage of pilots to justify induction of pilots on contract,” accused the pilots’ body.
The letter stated the government’s ambitious plans and monetary support for expanding PIA’s fleet to improve profitability are being hampered due to the inefficiency of flight operations department.
“PIA has a fleet of 35 aircraft and only 29 are operational while one B-747 is unofficially grounded and a total strength of 539 pilots, which comes to an average of 15.4 pilots per aircraft,” the statement said.
It may be noted that there is no shortage of pilots in the airline. It is rather due to the wrong placement and lack of training on particular equipments, said the association.
Palpa stated millions of dollars were spent on induction of in-house simulator of B-777 and A-310 in order to ensure low cost training but the DFO and Chief Pilot Planning & AIMS have intentionally faulted the training process just to benefit self and batch mates.
It is being attempted that all the deficiencies in planning, scheduling and training of crew, are pushed under the carpet by utilizing contractual pilots.
“The pilots on contract will be subjected to fly without raising an eyebrow on the perpetual violation of established duty times and will be given less than fully serviceable aircrafts,” added the letter.
Further, any hesitancy can be threatened by the withdrawal of the contract, Air Blue and Bhoja Air are classic cases to be considered while evaluating de-merits of such practices.
“Instead of making our own aircraft serviceable, it is continuously advocated on one pretext or the other to bring aircraft on expensive wet lease,” claimed the association, the only reason is to get absolved from the responsibility of maintenance of our own aircraft and also to keep the flight operation mismanagement a secret from the eyes of the Board.
It is also mentioned that there was no justification of grounding serviceable 500-seaters B-747 before Hajj and acquiring two 250-seater B-767s/A-330s.