Caught in a landslide – no escape from reality
No one likes to travel on Pakistan International Airline (PIA) except when someone doesn’t really have a choice – namely domestic travel and situations when one cannot afford to have a layover in-between and would need to reach the destination directly. The airline that was once widely considered to be one of the best in the world in the 1970’s has fallen far from grace. The airline that was given the best airline award for quality level of service is now the one that receives endless complaints from customers, and because of having no other choice for domestic travel, we have resigned ourselves to accepting it.
The airline whose logo has a tag line saying “best people to fly with” has proven to be rather the worst people to fly with, due to non-cooperation and unprofessional attitude of PIA employees. In fact it is worse than the worst because of its ancient aircrafts; mismanagement; delays in departures and arrivals; lack of availability of in-flight amenities; uncomfortable seats; the list goes on. And the Gulf carriers are taking full advantage of our weakness. Due to open sky’s policy, around 390 flights of Gulf carriers fly per week from Pakistan. Even this would not matter if PIA starts delivering its quality service and working as it once used to. In a competitive world, you are always on the brink, the moment you make any mistake, your competitor gets an edge. Emirates was started by PIA and today it is considered to be one of the best airlines in the world because of no corruption and no politics involved. Even Singapore airlines has reached great heights.
Maximum 4000 employees are needed to run PIA, whereas the total human resource currently involved is around 18000 (out of which around 14000 are permanent), yet it still displays a very disorganised picture. The unnecessary enrollments have contributed to the debt, which is PKR 248 billion according to the annual report of 2015. PIA has become a hostage to employees’ association. The airline unions (total 6; one each for crew, pilots, engineers, etc.) are a major problem working against the “rightsizing” of human resources. When the government decided to privatise 26% shares, the union suspended the operations all around the country and the organisation had to bear the brunt of billions of rupees, and frustrations and anger of customers too. If the improvement we are hoping for cannot be found through privatisation, the only remaining option would be to increase the fleet in order to engage the unnecessary human resource which itself incurs a cost without generating any form of productive output.
PIA was the first airline from Asia to operate a jet aircraft, to get maintenance approval by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Air Registration Board (British CAA), to start flights to Norway and to induct the new technology Boeing 737-300 aircraft and the first airline in the world to induct Boeing 777-200LR – the world’s longest range commercial airliner. There are many more milestones, but the real question lies with what is it doing now and what does the future hold for PIA?
So far, the decision is that the management and 51% shares of PIA would remain with the government. The government would either bring a strategic investor or through stock market after bettering the current condition of PIA 49% of shares will be sold in open market.
Whatever the decision that is taken, till then the real challenge is for the people of the country who have no other choice but to travel through PIA (with the current condition of the aircrafts) in need and not by choice. People have started travelling like never before and Pakistan is already on its way to more tangible development and progress than ever before, so the issue of PIA should be resolved as soon as possible so that the money of our people remain in our country. No doubt, huge efforts will be required for correcting the poor image that has already been made in the minds of travellers, but we have to start somewhere.
The recent initiative of PIA Premier Service (for which 3 Airbuses to be bought on wet lease from Sri Lanka are signed) to improve the quality of service is commendable. However, political mismanagement, nepotism, unnecessary expenses and enrollments have to be nipped in the bud simultaneously and the glorious era of PIA needs to see a new dawn.