FOR the previous few years, every new government had proclaimed a desire for rehabilitation and restructuring PIA, but that nothing had ever materialized due to a lack of political will and action. As a result, Pakistan’s populace ended up bearing the brunt of this failure. In addition, PIA management has consistently broken commitments made over the years to improve the company’s finances.
The Supreme Court regularly as well oversaw the proceedings of two suo motu cases involving irregularities in Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and its proposed privatisation of selling national assets (PIAC) at throwaway prices, as well as two other pending petitions against corruption, mismanagement and other wrongdoing.
There were a number of additional factors that contributed to the PIA reaching this point, including poor leadership, poor performance, excessive manpower, a lack of operational modernization and corruption. The government provided it with piecemeal assistance to pay the billions in daily costs without putting pressure on the management to perform better or allocating funds for more up-to-date planes.
Restructuring any organization frequently comprises a mix of managerial, operational and financial changes designed to boost output, cut costs and put the organization in a position for long-term success. There are number of factors, such as leadership and governance, innovation and technology, affect an organization’s best reorganization and business strategy. Integrate, focus on core competencies, the nature of the company and reexamine the business model, sector requirements, target market objectives and resource constraints. a keen understanding of the particular problems it faces and its long-term objectives.
Profitable airlines always have a targeted business plan that plays to their advantages and market opportunities, with clearly defined target markets, route networks and client categories that they can efficiently service. For the PIA, on the other hand, there has consistently been poor management, political meddling, lack of modernization, an ineffective cost structure, accumulated losses, excessive staffing, poor financial management and mal-governance.
That PIA enjoyed its most prosperous years in the 1970s and 1980s, when it provided technical and administrative support to a wide range of countries and, in 1985, acquired five new Boeing 737-300s to its fleet, becoming the first Asian airline with such a broad fleet. He continued, however, that despite PIA’s lengthy existence and its enormous customer base, the company still faces difficulties today and such and poor management have caused PIA to accrue losses totaling 635 billion, as reported by the end of September 2023. As a result, PIA is unable to pay the required taxes to FBR as well as the aviation and navigation fees to various nations and it has lost many significant international routes and passengers..
As the PIA Board has recently revealed and approved a proposal for reorganization and the plan primarily divides the PIA into two categories: a good PIA, which reportedly has the fewest liabilities, such as aircraft, profitable assets and essential departments and a bad PIA, which has the largest liabilities, such as loans, non-core departments and “unnecessary” employees, similar to Air India, in his opinion, which has a quiet distinct history and facts. The current reorganization plan is unclear because there aren’t any specifics given details. However, the Federal government would have the last say and before that, it is expected that independent experts from inside and outside of Pakistan should be consulted. The present exercise would be useful only if various legal concerns are resolved now, prior to its execution.
There is no denying the urgent need for PIA restructuring in order to save the taxpayers a significant amount of money and spend some other areas of their welfare, but the current effort should not be merely lip service or remain on paper, but rather be a permanent restructuring plan with the backing of law for PIA that should provide the way forward with government resolve by appointing technical minimum staff on merit with airline market base strategy and making funding for the restructuring available.
Finally it is important that in order to make the current restructuring plan more dynamic and commercially effective with complete legal support, it is urgently necessary to make the plan particulars public and to seek expert input within a reasonable time before its final approval. A strong federal government resolution must be made for such implementation in order to save billions of rupees for the taxpayer. This resolution must address all issues related to flight and aviation business, including non political interference, financial stability, separation of core and non core business, customer experience, workforce optimization, routes and market expansion, partnerships and alliances, technological integration, safety and regulatory compliance, fleet modernization, sustainability initiatives and adoption of best international practices.
