Region 
 

Karachi

Another Take-off

PIA’s journey, from ‘Great People to Fly With’ to a shameful situation, has been a story of corruption and failures. The nation’s pride in the airline must be restored.

By S.R.H. Hashmi | August 2020

Very early during their training in earning a private pilot’s licence, trainees are taught to take their flights seriously and remain alert all the time as unexpected things could happen fast. Maintaining proper height and speed is important at every stage of the flight and so is each take-off and landing. The exercise prior to landing includes putting one’s hand on an ashtray or something and saying aloud, “Under-carriage down and locked”, which seems meaningless because the small training aircraft have a fixed and not a retractable under-carriage. The idea is to get this step firmly implanted in the pilot’s mind, thus eliminating any chance of omitting it while flying a larger plane later, and meeting a disaster. Even while flying as a trainee private pilot, it is of utmost importance to follow the standard procedures, be extra careful during take-offs and landings, and not be cocksure at anytime during the flight. Of course, for commercial flying, the procedure is far more comprehensive.

PIA’s journey, from the glory of operating with the slogan ‘Great People to Fly With” - and justifying every word of it - to a shameful situation where I have seen letters titled “Great People to Die With” has been a great story of failures.

PIA commenced operations in 1955 with the transformation of Orient Airways into Pakistan International Airlines Corporation. Its Chairman was M.M. Ispahani while Zafar-Ul-Ahsan was its committed Managing Director who, during his four year tenure, put the airline on a sound foundation. When Air Marshals Asghar Khan and Nur Khan came, they took the airline to new heights, acquiring additional aircraft and starting new routes. Both had earlier served the Pakistan Air Force as Commander-in-Chief. PIA benefited immensely from Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s sterling leadership qualities. During his tenure, PIA achieved the lowest aircraft accident rate and highest net profit. PIA was a formidable competitor in the world airline business.

As for Air Marshal Nur Khan, former PIA employees say that while he was chief of the airline, during his surprise visits to various offices, he would even check the bathrooms and smelled the towels. He was an honest, competent and committed person who kept the biggest to the smallest detail under his constant watch. In fact, the spirit permeated all the way down to the lowest level of employees. One advantage that Nur Khan and his immediate predecessor and successor had was that they all enjoyed independence and faced no outside interference. Corruption was almost non-existent then.

It is a shame that PIA, which remained a pride of the nation until the 1970s, and helped establish the aviation industry in the Gulf, now presents a dismal picture, accumulating massive losses and liabilities while its future is uncertain. The biggest cause of this is cronyism and corruption. The political parties used PIA as a dumping ground to favour their supporters. Moreover, in order to facilitate their corruption, they placed their favourites, regardless of merit, in important positions. The extent of over-staffing in PIA can be judged from the fact that as against the industry average employees-to-aircraft ratio of 150 to 1, PIA has about 15,000 permanent employees while about a third of them are contract employees who service 35 aircraft. That sets a ratio of about 571 employees per aircraft.

The political parties used PIA as a dumping ground to favour their supporters.

While over-staffing is indeed a problem in PIA, it is also a fact that at the level that PIA is operating, it should have far more aircraft. However, increasing aircraft at this juncture would neither be possible nor practical when business is already down due to Covid-19. Restrictions have been placed on PIA flights by the European Union, UK and other countries. This means the employee level must be drastically reduced and only those qualifying on merit should be retained. The number of surplus employees could be in the thousands. To minimize human suffering, such employees should be offered generous golden handshakes.

Air India managed to reduce its employee-to-aircraft ratio from 300 employees to 108 employees per aircraft in two years, so there is no reason why PIA can’t do this over a certain period. It can be done through a combination of employee reduction and aircraft increases. The staff unions as well as the Pakistan Airlines Pilot Association have, in the style of some lawyers’ bodies, have become pressure groups rather than associations meant to safeguard the legitimate rights of their members. This power imbalance must be redressed.

Moreover, pilots’ conduct during flights and also at the time of take-off and landing must comply with SOPs, with deviations subjecting them to disciplinary action and even dismissal in case of serious violations. The CEO, Air Marshal Arshad Malik should be given the freedom to take independent action, with the approval of the board, but without interference from the government or any other body and also given reasonable time to show results.

A comprehensive programme for rehabilitating and restructuring PIA and the Civil Aviation Authority must be developed and the matter of pilots with fake licences and other urgent issues be dealt forthwith. Moreover, performance of pilots and other flight-related departments and institutions such as Air Traffic Control must be constantly watched and errant behaviour punished. I am sure that if a sound and comprehensive reform plan is drawn up and details of corrective action already taken are made public, such bodies as the European Union and other countries that have banned PIA flights temporarily would withdraw their restrictions.

As for privatization of PIA, in the present circumstances, a reasonable offer seems unlikely. So why not retain the airline and improve it, especially when there are so many Pakistanis working abroad who would love to travel by a reformed and born-again PIA?

The idea floated by certain PTI leaders to hand over the management of major Pakistani airports to foreign agents must be scrapped as it could endanger Pakistan’s security face of increasing Indian hostilities from, skirmishes between India and China and US aircraft carriers staging war games in the South China Sea near where China is holding naval exercises.

The privatization through public-private partnership of PIA’s Roosevelt Hotel in New York and Scribe Hotel in Paris must also be shelved till better times and should be made transparently.

Read More