LAHORE - Council of Employees Pakistan International Airline (CEPIA) reacted strongly to the statement of the airlines management, which implies that employees bodies are unaware about benefits of recent deal of PIA with Turkish Airlines. Sohail Baluch, President PALPA, Shaukat Jamshed, President SAEP, Najeebur Rehman, President ATAP, Abid Saleem of PIASSA and Kamaran Chaudhry of Peoples Unity have condemned the PIAs misleading statement to the press regarding its 'suicidal business deal. Clarifying the impression, PIA has given through its press release on Wednesday. They said that the PIA management had not stated the facts discussed in the meeting with the employees associations on the issue. They said that the management did not have any research to support its decision which was based on assumptions that were not satisfactory enough to term the agreement a sane move by the airline contrary to their claim of having explained the benefits of deal to airline employees. They asked that surrendering profitable routes to other airlines and act merely as a regional carrier to get 15 per cent of the revenues was not an attempt to destroy the airline? PIA claims that according to a survey around 81 per cent of the passengers to the destinations PIA was handing over to the Turkish Airline, travel through Gulf carriers. They said that this survey itself was testimony of the inefficient management and failed business strategy and marketing policy which failed to attract even Pakistani passengers. Moreover, instead of planning to get this business directly they have decided to lose whatever little share they have. They said MoU reveals that PIA would carry passengers up to Istanbul and hands over to Turkish Airline for onward destinations. For that PIA will pay a 15 per cent commission to Turkish Airline. He said that such flaws in MoU make it not only unviable for PIA but also indicate an unfair deal that is reflected from such clauses. They added that the PIA was the only carrier which has direct flights to Europe from Pakistan and it was one of the reasons that PIA was getting traffic despite its inefficient marketing. Now PIA may lose this traffic as flights will be operated via Istanbul. They said that the PIA management was totally ignoring the convenience of Pakistani travelers and market demand and this major policy shift would axe its passengers and revenue as well. They said PIA has been operating these routes since its inception and nobody in the history ever suggested such suicidal attempt plus no sane person would ever hand over its profitable business routes to its competitors. They said that the international airlines make such agreements on the routes they are not operating directly and add more routes through such agreements but this is the first instance in aviation history that an airline is handing over its routes to some other airline just to cut down its costs instead of trying to enhance the revenues from such routes. They urged the Civil Aviation Authority and Ministry of Defence to look into the matter as earlier decisions of MD PIA have already caused severe losses to the airline which he accepted before senate committee. They said that the PIA management has failed to understand the core issues and instead of devising rational strategy for rehabilitation of national flag carrier, it is bent upon destroying it further making it a regional airline only. They said that any category of loss to national flag carrier will not be acceptable to its employees and shareholders and they would never let management to put airline into another catastrophe.