Amraiz Khan
Lahore
At the when Pilots Association of PIA has taken up safety of it’s staff with Govt officials, there is an interesting history of our sinking National Carrier.
There was a time when PIA operated it’s flights globally, covering the entire domestic landscape and international destinations spread over 4 continents.
PIA was considered the leading airline of the world offering the best services and the most decent and well-mannered staff, it was a name that every Pakistani would proudly mention his name with.
PIA since its start has been a very profitable institution, during it’s golden era, PIA set-up Emirates and few leading airlines in 70s and 80s. During the 2000’s besides making considerable losses PIA kept purchasing new planes like 8 Boeing, 777s, The downfall of PIA kept eating up PIA’s reserves and losses increased by every passing day.
Bringing in foreign reserves by providing services in many countries and to many nations, while this growth and reputable era PIA was making profits, but was certain government policies and mandates hampered its performance and profitability, How does one explain that the first Asian airline ever to receive maintenance approval by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the past has been banned by the European Union in 2007 based on safety concerns for its ageing fleet.
Who would believe that the first airline ever to show in-flight movies on international routes and to use the first computer ever in Pakistan, would someday lose its customer base because people would perceive it as archaic and out-dated.
The problems with PIA like many other Pakistani Institutions and company is intervention of Political Leadership in its affairs. If we look closely into the history of PIA we can see that the Head of Stats have been appointing several incompetent Chief Executives and Managing Directors of Pakistan International Airline, taking the airline downhill, moreover, worst recent example is, that PPP Govt. has been accused of giving unjustified employments in PIA which put a strain on the finances of the company like salaries and wages expense. Only recently it has been found that about thousands of employees of PIA had fake credentials and they had climbed the hierarchy of PIA with time. Besides having fake credentials and incompetence PIA has been making efforts in the past to lay-down employees but the management and leadership could not be successful in doing this because the staff and crew refused to work.
PIA fails to deliver good services to its customers, perhaps PIA is too busy in catering its own employees of about 19000 people. The ratio of employees to planes in PIA is berserk according to international standards, airlines have no greater than on average 100 employees per aircraft while PIA has about 776 people working per airplane, vast number of such employees are busy in union activities, some of them they don’t even come on duty, so much so, PIA has given them offices in it’s head office to operate.
Successive Unions strikes like on against Privatisation was the last nail in the coffin, which disrupted the airlines schedules at a great cost to passengers/cargo clients, with estimated loss of billions of rupees of revenue. And sadly the cost was infinitely higher for the families of the two who died during the protests.
There were also reports of intimidation by one member body who broke the strike notably Pakistan Air Lines Pilots Association (PALPA) Unilateral effort of it’s President, Capt. Amir Hashmi as well as the police intimidating JACPIAE members from going to the protest venue.
It has to be acknowledged, that beside unions like Air League of PIA employees, Peoples Unity of PIA employees, Senior Staff Association (SSA), Society of Aircraft Engineers Pakistan (SEAP), FENA, nearly all opposition parties including the PPP, PTI and MQM expressing solidarity with the Joint Action Committee and committing to supporting them in protest.
Most recent clash between the government and Palpa where they had held talks to resolve the clash but the negotiations failed repeatedly. The strike has cost more than Rs 40 crores to the international airlines in seven days.
When this scribe contacted one of Palpa member, he said “we have always been taken as villain, where as, PIA is still surviving due to our Ex president’s efforts, when the Strike was called by all the PIA Unions, supported by all the Political parties in opposition, our President never supported the idea of such strike, “which could have serious consequences on an airline which is already sinking… He always felt that Pilots are part of a professional body and we are not a political party,” where as, PIA strike had turned into a political arena, while Leaders of Jackpiae have threatened him to be cut into peaces if he doesn’t join the strike, video clip is available of such threat.
Once the strike failed due to Palpa’s effort, Advisor to PM on Aviation, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan had formed a six-member task force to propose cuts in PIA expenditures and prepare austerity drive report within two weeks, Captain Hashmi was made head of this task force.
Mr. Hashmi in his recommendation, proposed, that all union offices should be shut down from premises of PIA, he referred them as snakes hatched by ourself, who bite us from time to time.
Such comments were not digested by the Union members who had already became his enemy once he refused to take part in strike, there were various false cases framed against him, such fake cases enabled them to stop him from taking further control over management, although he came out clean against all the conspiracies against him, he added.
