LAHORE - The PIA management has placed two officers under suspension and removed two others from their positions for refusing boarding cards to about 63 passengers of a Wednesday’s Kuala Lumpur-bound flight that caused up to Rs4million losses to the national flag carrier.
PIA General Manager [Passengers Handling] Aamir Bashir has put Kashif Rana and Gul Hassan under suspension and removed Asif Ali and Qazi Qamar as shift manager and terminal manager, respectively.
The reason behind non-issuance of boarding cards was that the passengers had refused to pay PIA officers Rs1000 gratification.
A senior PIA official, who wished not to be named, revealed that flight PK-898 was scheduled to depart for Kuala Lumpur at 6:55 am on Wednesday and as many as 206 passengers were booked on flight operated by A-310 plane with the capacity of 227 passengers.
Interestingly only 143 passengers could check in while rest of them were refused boarding cards by PIA staff Rana Kashif, traffic supervisor, Qazi Qamar, terminal manager, Asif Ali, shift manager and Gul Hassan, traffic supervisor.
It may be mentioned here that PIA operates a weekly flight from Lahore to Kuala Lumpur and most of the passengers travelling on this flight belong to labour class. In another case wherein a female passenger travelling from Manchester to Lahore was harassed, PIA cabin crew has been suspended.  Although PIA management has suspended crew members, no investigation officer has so far been ordered to look into the matter.