…had a great fall!
PIA’s financial problems were of course carried forward into 2016 but the year saw two very damaging additions to the laundry list of all that is wrong with the national carrier. Privatisation of key publically owned enterprises was one of the key conditions that had been placed by the IMF on the outlay of the extended fund facility (EFF) of USD6.01 billion. Apart from divestment in two private banks, the government had so far been unable to satisfy the IMF on the privatisation clause and naively set their sights on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
What ensued was no surprise. An over-staffed organisation with a strong union flexed its muscles and brought the airline to a close for almost three weeks. The competitors made a killing while PIA suffered both financial and reputational losses and the airline remains in doldrums and unsold. In the process the chairman at the time, Mr Nasser Jaffer, resigned after the death of two employees in a clash with security forces during the protests.
In December PIA flight PK-661 crashed killing all 48 passengers and crew on board. The ATR-42 delivered to PIA in 2007 was reported to be in good flying condition and the pilot had over 12,000 hours of flight time and had extensive experience in northern areas. While the investigation is under way and French ATR experts are present in Islamabad, it is little solace to the families of the deceased as to why the plane went down.
The airline lost its second chairman in a year when Azam Saigol resigned following the crash. PIA’s PR team has been quite ineffective as well. While they were able to promote their ‘premier’ flight to London in the newly bought Airbus A330’s from Sri Lanka, which boasts a business class with a working entertainment system and fully flat seats – both features are absent from their Boeing 777 flight to London – the strike and crash kept the failing airline in the news for all the wrong and tragic reasons. One hopes sacrificing goats on the runway as a pre-flight SOP is replaced with more modern methods to ensure safety in the air in 2017.
