LAHORE -  Pakistan International Airlines local and international stations have missed sales targets by miles for the year of 2015-16 and even the revenues generated were lesser than the previous year, statistics available with The Nation revealed Thursday.

It is worth mentioning here that adviser to Prime Minister on Aviation, Sardar Mehtab Abbasi couple of days back pledged that action would be taken against those who have not met the targets and acted irresponsibly that led to losses to the company. He had said that promotions will be linked to performance with KPIs developed by the HR department.

But interestingly, the PIA management instead of issuing displeasure notice on responsible persons has awarded such an officer by posting him as District Manager PIA in Lahore who failed to achieve target during his posting as Passenger Sales Manager last year.

The performance of Lahore Passengers Sale Section of marketing department remained poor during the year 2016 as it missed the target by 26 percent with sales of Rs5426.31 million against the target of Rs7373.16 fixed by the airline management. Even the revenue collected in 2016 was lesser by 8.69 percent than the revenue earned during 2015.

Country manager of PIA in New York also missed the target by 26.19 percent as during the year 2016 the station could earn $19.26 million against a target of $23.70. The earnings were also 18.73 percent lesser than that of revenue generated during 2015, which was $23.70 million.

Country Manager in Toronto missed the target by 6.77 percent as the PIA could earn 41.96 million in Canadian dollars against a target of 45 million dollars.

On European routes including Copenhagen, Oslo, Paris, Manchester and Barcelona national carrier management had fixed the target of 112.73 millions in local currency of respective countries but country heads could earn 101.49 million in total, which was 15.46 percent off the target.

On United Kingdom routes including London, Manchester, Bradford and Birmingham, station heads were 19.68 oercent behind the target as they could collect 82.98 million pounds against a target of 103.31 million pounds.

PIA country managers in UAE including Dubai and Abu Dhabi also failed to achieve targets as they were 2.73 percent off the target with earnings 160.50 million UAE dirham against a target of 165 million.

On Saudi Arabia sector including Jeddah, Madina, Damam and Riyadh, PIA also failed to achieve target and airline could get 360.34 million Saudi Rial whereas target was 491.01, which was 26 .61 percent less than the target fixed for the year 2016.

Similarly on routes like Far East, South Asia and Gulf national carrier management failed to achieve sale targets during the year 2016 and achieved revenues were also less than that of recovered during 2015.

Adviser to Prime Minister on aviation is very keen about the upgradation of the PIA. He believed that marketing is the key area of the PIA which must bring improvement. Couple of days back, addressing to the marketing department officials he advised the team to come up with innovative ideas for attracting more customers and increasing revenue.

Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer PIA, Bernd Hildenbrand has gone on 15 days leave on April 06 to 20. The PIA management has approved his leave but did not allow him to leave the country. Sources said the CEO had requested Chairman PIA for one time exemption from the ECL on March 21, 2017. But a letter regarding approval of his leave further speaks: “You will, however, not leave Pakistan till approval of your request for one time exemption from ECL by the Ministry of Interior”.