Crisis ridden aviation industry

Every government in Pakistan has been protecting local automobile and tractor manufacturers by preventing import of new foreign made cars etc, although there are numerous flaws and compromises on basic universally accepted safety standards and features which state regulation should have ensured. Similar protection has been given to sugar, cement, textile and other industries which are privately owned. However, when it comes to state owned enterprises such as PIA, every successive government for the past two decades has been going out of way giving traffic rights to foreign airlines to the detriment of all Pakistani owned airlines. It is a universally accepted practice that traffic rights between sovereign responsible states are given on reciprocal basis. Even peak time slots at major airports such as London Heathrow, Chicago’s O’hare, JFK New York etc give priority to local airlines, while foreign airline have to wait in queue for several years. The harm to Pakistan aviation continues even today and latest abuse by CAA is granting of four weekly flights to Milando Air on Kuala Lumpur to Lahore route.

It could only have happened in this country that ever since 2006 there has been an astronomical rise in share of traffic rights for Gulf based airlines which by 2015 operate almost 395 weekly flights to various destinations within Pakistan, while all our airlines operate only 55 flights per week to UAE. Can anybody justify granting an airline operators license by CAA in 2010-2012 to an airline owned by two Indian nationals Jaidip Merchandani and Nithin Merchandani registered under Aeorospace Consortium Fze, PO Box 1726, Fujairah, with Pakistani front-men and dual nationality holding crew for starting domestic flight operations as a registered private airline, which was earlier allowed to register their aircraft in Pakistan for transporting weapons to Bagram. No investigation has been carried out into CAA giving unauthorised landing rights to non-scheduled airlines without any documentation of landing records, payment of landing charges for almost one year in 2011, nor any record of their cargo load or crew at Karachi airport in connivance with corrupt political cronies placed at helm of CAA.

G ZAMAN

Peshawar