PIA to revert to full operations by next week: spokesperson

KARACHI: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has claimed to restore its full operations by next week after it paid Rs 500 million to Pakistan State Oil (PSO) for Thursday’s fuel.

The crisis that threw PIA‘s flight schedule into disarray due to the non-availability of fuel for the last several weeks, appears to have lost some steam after the national flag carrier claimed improvement in flight operations.

PIA made the payment of Rs.500 million to PSO which relaxed the credit line of Rs.500 million PSO offered to PIA a few days ago, The News learnt. In the wake of the payment around 35 flights are planned to be fuelled, the officials said. On the other hand, PIA said that the normal flight operations, which were scheduled six months ago were done away and now the flight operations are being run on the basis of fuel availability. PIA Spokesperson Athar Awan said that the airline operated 60 flights including 46 on international and 14 on domestic routes on Thursday. “This signifies an improvement in PIA operations as it was operating 32 flights a few days ago”, he asserted.

Athar said that 75 flights would leave for international and domestic routes on Friday and hoped that PIA would restore its full operations by next week.

The lack of payments and the consequent fuel suspension led to the cancellation of around 400 international and domestic flights of PIA in the last several weeks, depriving it of revenues and customers.