LAHORE - Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is facing record loss of Rs. 10 billion during last 10-months after takeover of current top management, an airline Finance Department report said.

Though airline management has been blowing trumpet that they have increased the revenue of the airline but facts are otherwise.

Former Nawaz govt had almost changed all the management including Chief Executive Officer who have been hired on very high salaries and were supposed to bring improvement in all the areas of airline particularly to make the airline profitable.

Unfortunately, PIA has incurred a loss of Rs 48 billion from September 2017 to June 2018 as compared to Rs 38 billion of the corresponding period of last year.

This is the highest ever record loss to the airline, statistics of the Finance Department revealed. New Management on the plea of curtailing losses had closed down number of important routes being operated more than five decades like; New York, Kuwait etc. despite this, results are totally contrary to the claims.

Due to poor planning of the current management, a total of 650 flights were cancelled due to poor loads during the period of Jan - Jun 2018 which not only annoyed the passengers but also gave a bad name to the airline and its reliability. An officer of the airline Finance Department said that increase in revenue was only 5 per cent despite the fact that rupee devaluation as compare to US dollar was 26 per cent.

New Management instead of bringing improvement in customer related areas, started to remove the National Flag of Pakistan from the tail of aircraft and started to place Markhore there which had no relevance towards betterment instead a way of grabbing money for their own pockets. It involved approx Rs 7.4 million for one aircraft.

Thanks to Allah Almighty and Chief Justice of Pakistan who took a suo moto and instructed PIA to refrain from this activity.

Management has also failed to maintain the fleet numbers as of September 2017. The numbers show drastic decrease.

Engineering and maintenance facilities have also shown poor performance and that is the reason a number of aircraft are parked in the maintenance workshops. Management has also failed to manage Haj operation and no planning has been made to induct aircraft on lease for smooth and successful operation. 

Sources within PIA informed that Ad had been placed in the Press for acquiring aircraft which was too late.

To meet Haj operation requirement, PIA has cancelled more than 80 scheduled flights to Europe and UK, Kuala Lumpur etc. which will severely damage the airline's revenues.

Yields are dropping drastically since airline management is selling tickets on throwaway prices for the only reason that airlines services are poor like In-flight Entertainment System is obsolete, Cabin TVs are out of order, half of the toilets are blocked, food stuff is poor as compared to other competitive airlines, only one meal and one time snacks are served during long flights of 14 hours while in other airlines two meals are served and one snack, seats are harder and cannot be reclined.

There is no check on the officials engaged in frequent movement (official trips) from one place to another on Corporation expenses.

In a recent case highlighted in social media, a Chief Officer had to justify in this regard.

CEO Musharraf Rasool himself does not stay in Karachi, he is mostly on OCS (On Corporate Service) in Islamabad or Lahore and calls all his Cabinet there for meetings.

In which employee is entitled to travelling allowance daily allowance and transportation and boarding lodging.

Due to the inefficient management, all HR policies have been set aside and beloved ones are being promoted / appointed on higher positions without implementing and following any PIA policies.

A number of senior officers have been sidelined without assigning any reasons and have been sitting at homes and drawing salaries.

Union CBA and Senior Staff Association as well as number of Senators have already challenged the illegal appointment of CEO and others in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

All the appointees do not carry merit and do not fulfill the prescribed criteria for their appointments.

Supreme Court of Pakistan on June 30th 2018 has also instructed Cabinet to evaluate the appointments in PIA and put up report immediately.

Now the ball is in the court of Federal Government to decide fate of the National Flag Carrier to save it from further losses by removing all the ill-appointees and handover command in the hands of professionals.

When contacted spokesman for PIA, Mashhud Tajwar said that no doubt there were losses during last 10 months but these were only due to devaluation of the rupee.

He said that had management not introduced better policies in the airline the losses would have been far higher.

About the Haj operation, he said that the management has decided to use the planes operating on different routes by reducing their parking time on different destinations.

To a question why the more planes were not leased for Haj operation this year, he said that planes as per management choice were not available in the market and airline does not afford to hire the planes on Dry Lease.