This is in reference to your report on the delay of a PIA flight, PK711, on 14 Dec. Two of my nieces arrived by separate PIA flights from Jeddah and Manchester at Lahore. Both of them received their accompanied booked baggage with locks broken and missing items. These locks must have been broken by PIA staff deputed to offload baggage from aircraft for transportation to arrival lounge, where they are put on conveyor belts for collection by passengers. Just few months back, media reported that 46 passengers with confirmed seats and valid work visas travelling on PIA flight from Lahore to Kuala Lumpur were refused Boarding Cards by PIA staff, because they refused to give them money which was demanded from these passengers.
As usual PIA management ordered an inquiry, but nobody was punished because all of them were members of union affiliated with the ruling party. Similar reports of irregularities have been reported at PIA booking in Lahore, but no disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible. On 14 December, the media again reported that PIA flight to New York from Lahore was delayed for over two hours, just because breakfast and snacks offered to passengers and crew were not to the liking of pilots.
Over the last ten years indiscipline in PIA has risen and trickled down from top to bottom of the ladder. During PPP’s tenure, a senior PIA executive was caught on camera dancing like a circus clown with a whiskey glass balanced on his head at a dinner hosted by MD Aijaz Haroon. The fish, they say, rots from the head down, and PIA is best example of this rot where indiscipline and financial irregularities in top-heavy management have paralysed this airline. Today they hardly have 25 aircrafts, but surplus employees of all cadre, sufficient for a fleet of over 100 aircrafts.
SHAHZAD KHALIL
Sialkot