Having secured additional rights of operations from the Pakistani government, Dubai-based international airline, Emirates, is all set to deprive the domestic carriers, including Pakistan International Airlines, Shaheen Airlines and Air Blue, of their share in the industry.
Emirates, which started its operations in March 1985 after getting two planes from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), now operates in 78 countries with 3,300 flights per week.
Recently, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has given it additional rights to operate in Quetta, Panjgur, Turbat and Gwadar, diverting the local passengers from the national carriers to Emirates for direct flights to Dubai and other countries of the world.
“This is a big loss to the Pakistani airlines including Shaheen and PIA as the passengers of these cities were using services of national carriers. Three American airlines are fighting against Emirates’ operations in USA, but the Pakistani government was giving more and more rights to Emirates. This is not fair,” said a PIA official.
“On the other hand, the government has been trying to privatise PIA for the last several years. Is the government trying to sell off the country to foreigners or what? How are the domestic stakeholders supposed to flourish if the government keeps on facilitating international companies?” he questioned.
According to CAA, on June 5, 2015, Bilateral Air Services Agreement talks between Pakistan and United Arab Emirates were held in Islamabad. The talks were held in a friendly and cordial atmosphere regarding all outstanding issues.
Landmark changes in the new agreement include opening up four airports of Balochistan; Quetta, Panjgur, Turbat, and Gwadar, to five airlines of UAE for unlimited operations, a CAA official said, adding that this will facilitate the citizens of these districts to fly abroad directly from their hometowns.
However, the CAA official said that traffic rights to the airlines of UAE for Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar have been frozen at the current level for the time being due to infrastructural constraints at these airports. For Karachi, the open skies arrangements between Dubai and Karachi concluded in 1998 remains intact.
“Pakistani airlines, on the other hand, will enjoy unlimited traffic rights from all airports of Pakistan to all airports of UAE. Our airlines would also be free to operate beyond UAE to any other country of the world,” he added.
“The additional services to Karachi and the introduction of Multan to our network will position Pakistan as Emirates’ fourth most highly served country worldwide with 80 return flights a week operating between Dubai and Pakistan,” said West Asia and Indian Ocean Commercial Operations Senior Vice President Ahmed Khoory.
Moreover, the three big US airlines – Delta Air Lines, United Continental Holdings and American Airlines Group – alleged that Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar airlines received more than $42 billion in “unfair subsidies” from the Gulf government. As a result, the Gulf carriers are able to take the US airlines’ market by offering cheap flight fares, which does not make economic sense.
However, the three Gulf airlines completely denied all the allegations. The US airlines also requested the United States government to review the Open Skies agreement, through which Gulf carriers operate in US.
Emirates President Tim Clark told reports on the sidelines of an International Air Transport Authority (IATA) meeting that the airline will submit a detailed report to the US government in response to US airlines’ accusation that it was one of the carriers receiving unfair subsidies from the Gulf government. Earlier last week, Etihad also submitted a 60-page report to the US government to counter the US airlines’ allegation.
It's good in a way coz people should have more choices available and the local flights must come up with innovative ideas to expand their business.
People need good service. Its time PIA and other local airlines get their acts together and compete on service.
PIA will only be able to compete with Emirates if the Pakistani government starts subsidizing them to the same level. Do the people of Pakistan want their government to divert funds used for more important issues to an airline? Do the people of Pakistan want good paying aviation jobs, like pilots, flight attendants, network planners, maintenance facilities, etc., to be shifted to Dubai because of the inability to compete with UAE oil funded subsidies? Probably not. And the phrase written above that PIA will have reciprocal rights to fly anywhere in the UAE means Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Exchanging access to the entire country of Pakistan to the two cities of the UAE is not a fair deal. Pakistanis should limit Emirates Airlines flying to their country to avoid the loss of jobs, GDP, and their national airline.
This is hardly in line with the free markets and capitalism rhetoric that the US has been forcefully cramming down our throats for such a long time.
Anyways, anyone who has traveled on these routes knows very very well that they would prefer to travel Emirates rather than any Pakistani airline because of better service, better safety and better pricing, yes I said better pricing.
Just because you are not aware of how bad our airlines are does not mean you should copy paste the arguments being used in the first world and apply them here.
When is Nawaz Shareef making an accession application to UAE? Thats what is left. Everything else is already sold out to GCC Arabs that finance terrorism in Pakistan. UBL, PTCL, etc everything has been sold to the arabs…. gimme a break Nawaz Shareef. I want to remain a Pakistani.
The author is completely oblivious to India policy makers strategy of attracting Middle East Carriers with cheaper and frequent flights as their first priority. Pakistan needs to catch up with 20% regional air traffic growth rate to exploit an economic opportunity 5 folds bigger than CPEC . The expatriate income for pakistan is growing at 19% which is highest ever yet only a fraction of the $100 billion potential due to expensive and low air traffic growth rate only at 3% in pakistan.
The author is completely oblivious to India policy makers strategy of attracting Middle East Carriers with cheaper and frequent flights as their to priority. Pakistan needs to catch up with 20% regional air traffic growth rate to exploit an economic opportunity 5 folds bigger than CPEC . The expatriate income for pakistan is growing at 19% which is highest ever yet only a fraction of the $100 billion potential due to expensive and low air traffic growth rate only at 3% in pakistan.
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