Says it all
PIA’s downside, just like Pakistan’s, has no bottom really. And nobody was surprised that seven passengers were made to travel standing Karachi-Madina in January because the airline has sunk so low – nobody but those seven, probably. It’s not just the humiliation that comes the way of the national flag carrier every time it embarrasses itself even more, in this particular case there’s also the legal aspect that those seven passengers paid to sit down and fly to Madina, just like everyone else. This particular case will fade from the headlines now, and the wronged will just have to gulp it and move on, if precedent is anything to go by.
Somebody, somewhere, must be thinking just what it would take to turn PIA around, just like those other PSEs that hemorrhage hundreds of billions every year. Nobody would want to try privatising it again; with good reason. They could wrap it up, of course and start over again. But that would do nothing about the corruption and incompetence and we’d have the same situation all over again; a distant parallel is the circular debt absurdity. PIA’s stock, then, just like Pakistan’s, is likely to see more troughs than peaks in the near future.