ISLAMABAD: The management of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will develop a comprehensive five-year strategic business plan to turn the national flag carrier into a profitable entity and revive its past glory, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) PIA, Air Marshal Arshad Mehmood Malik said on Tuesday.
“Due to mismanagement and corruption the PIA has become a liability. The 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 told a news conference here at the Press Information Department.
The 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. Arshad said the five-year plan would undertake measures for cost saving, revenue generation, improvement and expansion of flight operations. “The financial restructuring through government support will also be part of the plan,” he said.
He said the revival of the airlines’ past glory is a daunting task but he had full backing of the minister for Aviation to turns its fortunes. He said after assuming the charge he found that PIA was a white elephant turned black hole due to several issues such as meddling of the PIA Union into the administrative affairs, corruption, non-professional attitude and over-staffing. “But I also found that PIA pilots, engineers and technicians were among the best in the industry and they needed only ownership to harmonise their energies,” he added.
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. “The flights to these routes were causing a loss of 500 million rupees every month,” he said. He said similarly the 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 the rationalisation, closure and rerouting of flights is yielding fruits as 200 million rupees would be saved per month. He said seven profit making routes have 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 the 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 ghost employees have been removed while action has 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 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, are being refurbished.
The 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 in the last 10 years in the tenure of the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz governments.
Ironically, he said, the PIA started facing crisis with the ‘taking-off ‘of the democracy under the Charter of Democracy, adding “Exactly, it is a classic case study of mis-governance from 2008-17.”