Such a long journey

Last week, I shared some reflections from Japan with the readers. However,  the downside of the trip also needs to be highlighted.

Flying with PIA from Islamabad to Tokyo was quite an experience. The food was good and the flight attendants were courteous. The plane was old and dirty.

None of the seat-back screens worked. When the main lights of the cabin were switched off, one couldn’t use an individual light to read. The colour was peeling off the handrests and one of them was broken while the other was loose.

But all this pales in comparison to what happened on our return flight on July 10. We reached Narita International Airport at 10am and were informed that the flight had been delayed by six hours.

A lunch voucher worth Yen 1,000 was given to each passenger. But no decent meal was available for less than Yen 2,000. After six hours, most children were crying and the adults were in distress. The PIA staff subsequently informed us that the flight had been cancelled due to a technical fault in Beijing.

The passengers thanked their lucky stars that the fault had appeared in Beijing and not when they were flying back from Tokyo. What followed was the chaos of the PIA staff moving to-and-fro at the airport to accommodate passengers on other flights. The passengers waited for hours and prayed for vacant seats on other airlines. The problem was that no airline flew directly from Tokyo to any city in Pakistan. The two possible options were Emirates and Thai Airways, which both flew to Pakistan via their own countries.

The passengers witnessed the desperate attempts made by the PIA staff – especially by Abdul Waheed and Mirza Asif Zafar – to convince both the airlines to have some mercy on the stranded passengers. At around 8pm – when we had already been at the airport for over 10 hours – the PIA staff gave us three options. One: to take the next PIA flight after four days on July 14. Two: to take the Thai Air flight via Bangkok the next day and reach Lahore on the day after at midnight, with no hotel accommodation in either Bangkok or Lahore and no transport facilities from Lahore to Islamabad. The third option was to take an Emirates flights to Dubai and then to Peshawar. This involved a 20-hour transit at the Dubai airport, without any hotel accommodation in Dubai and no provision of transport from Peshawar to Islamabad.

The passengers lost their cool and began yelling at the PIA staff. Some demanded hotel rooms and others wondered how they would reach Islamabad from Lahore and Peshawar if they took any of the flights. The PIA staff had just one answer: they could neither offer hotel rooms nor promise any transport facilities from Lahore and Peshawar to Islamabad.

Despite repeated requests and a series of threats and warning, the PIA staff simply showed their inability to do anything. They said they were in contact with the PIA authorities in Islamabad and nobody was willing to do anything else.

After spending 12 hours at the airport, almost half of the passengers who had homes or relatives in Tokyo decided to wait for the flight scheduled for July 14. Those who had nowhere to go in Tokyo had to opt for the second or third options given by the PIA staff.

We decided to take the Emirates flight that was flying within the hour and reached Dubai the next morning. By that time, we were already in travel mode for over 24 hours.

In Dubai, we found that there were PIA flights to Islamabad the same day and seats were available in the economy plus and business classes.

We wondered why PIA had not offered those seats to us to put an end our ordeal. We had to pay for the hotel out of our own pockets and waited for 24hours – not 20 hours as the PIA staff in Tokyo had announced. We finally landed in Peshawar on the third day of our journey on July 12.

At Peshawar airport, there was no Metro Cab or Taxi office and we had to rely on local cabbies. We eventually hired a taxi and reached Islamabad 62 hours after we had arrived at Narita International Airport.

This experience raises some questions for PIA’s management: Why didn’t PIA accommodate us on the flights from Dubai to Islamabad when the seats were available in the economy plus and business classes?

Why didn’t PIA book hotels for the passengers in Dubai? Why weren’t transport facilities provided to take passengers to Islamabad from Lahore and Peshawar when the passengers had booked their flights to Islamabad and not to Lahore or Peshawar?

While engine failure or any other technical fault may be beyond the capacity of PIA officials, the basic rights of passengers are not. In the 21st century, hotel rooms can be booked within minutes. The PIA staff could have also arranged transport for passengers travelling to Islamabad.

Will this negligence be rectified by at least compensating the passengers for their hotels and transport bills? Or will the PIA management wait for legal action from passengers such as this writer?

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

Email: Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk