Adviser says steps are being taken to revive PIA to its past glory
Mehtab says PIA Engineering Division earned more than Rs 1 billion in a year by providing ‘A’ check to aircrafts of other airlines
PIA enhances its engineering capacity at Islamabad
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) achieved a milestone when its Engineering and Maintenance division on Tuesday successfully enhanced its capabilities by performing first ever maintenance A-check on Airbus A320 at Benazir Bhutto International Airport Islamabad.
Advisor to the Prime Minister on Aviation Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan inaugurated the enhancement set-up. Speaking on the occasion, he said that steps were being taken to revive PIA to its past glory.
It is really appreciable that the PIA Engineering had undertaken various initiatives to revive the past glory. He said that aircraft safety and maintenance had a pivotal role in the safe, successful and reliable operations and all possible steps would be taken for that purpose.
The A320 A-check is performed after every 750 flight hours on each A320 aircraft in PIA fleet. Previously, the A320 A-check was being performed only at Karachi Airport.
Sardar Mahtab said that the enhancement of maintenance capabilities in Islamabad would save revenue, which was incurred due to unnecessary adjustment in flight schedule for positioning of aircraft at Karachi.
Setup enhancement of such capabilities will allow PIA to permanently position A320 aircraft at Islamabad, considering operational requirements. It will also help attract third party business for PIA engineering, which will generate extra revenues, he added.
Later talking to media, Sradar Mahtab appreciated the engineering management of PIA on achieving the milestone. He said PIA management was striving hard for the successful turnaround of the national airline.
He said PIA engineering had around 4000 engineers adding that all out efforts would be made to fully avail the expertise and skills of these engineers. He informed that the PIA engineering had done a business of Rs 1 billion last year and the target for the ongoing year had been set Rs 1.4 billion.
He said sale of revenue was also being generated through sale of surplus inventory. To a question regarding privatization of PIA, he said that for the time being decision had been made to restructure the national airline.
Basically, the plan is to separate core and non-core business of the national airline. PIA will keep on working in core business, while the government will make the non-core a separate part, he added.
To another query he said that recently a new 777 Airliner had been added to the PIA fleet on dry lease adding that for the time being the national airline was not taking any aircraft on wet lease.
Responding to another question he said that former Director General Civil Aviation had been relieved of his duties as he had reached superannuation. He said soon advertisement would be given for the appointment of new DG.
He expressed the desire to hire new DG from the private sector stating that in civil aviation there was a need to hire people from private sector because there was a need to turn its culture into a corporate culture.
