There is no nuclear science involved in evaluating the cause for PIA's financial losses, nor any foreign consultant required to show you the path of recovery. I have been a keen observer of launching the Sialkot Airport project, which was necessitated by poor business acumen of PIA and CAA, which were hostage to vested interest groups and parochial lobbies.
It is a very plain and simple issue. In any business like an airline industry, where there is competition and abundance of choices, the industry has to bend itself to suit the customer in terms location of vendors, customer convenience and value for money for services rendered.
In the case of PIA, a lot has changed since the advent of Open Sky policy, and the post cold war global changes. Within PIA itself, the airline today has outsourced almost 70 percent of its key maintenance functions like "Engine Overhaul" and shop maintenance of major components to foreign vendors, with routine parts replacement, servicing etc, the only job still being done by PIA engineers themselves.
Key technical support systems for provision of electrics, start cart, towing etc has been outsourced already. Unfortunately the outsourcing has not produced any improvements, but on the other hand created more problems in terms of ramp accidents resulting in serious damage to aircraft on ground.
The recently concluded Umra Operation tells it all. Umra passengers chose to travel by foreign airlines, who offered them flights from airports closer to their homes. The choices in terms of airlines, fares and seat availabilty was to the advantage of passengers, a reality that is here to stay. The other ground reality is that almost 80 percent of airline revenue in terms of passenger and cargo today originates, as it did yesterday, from Frontier, Punjab and Azad Kashmir.
The only thing that has changed and is irreversible is the reality that passenger today is no longer hostage to PIA's schedules and has a vast choice of airlines. PIA no longer has the option to pass on the impact of a foolishly planned airline operation, by raising fares and expect passengers to oblige. The financial impact of an ill-conceived and uneconomical operation, where aircrafts have to fly almost empty to northern hubs, on the false pretense that this is a maintenance requirement, is PIA's own hang-up and not the passengers problem. Economics and market forces do not justify the airlines arguments. The net result has been, that losses have continued to pile up astronomically, and revenues have declined.
Slashing of schedules and frequencies by a management ignorant of aviation industry intricacies, has only increased instead of curtailing them. The Federal Government needs to foot in the bill, if PIA's infrastructure location and aircraft positioning or uneconomical schedules is a political necessity or requirement, by subsidising the extra cost incurred.
PIA's rising losses, which today have gone above Rs 1.5 billion a month, point out to the miserable failure of Islamabad for poor choice of CEOs and their choice of dream teams. PIA needs to be run on pure commercial airlines basic, or else the state exchequer must subsidise losses, if it choses as the owner to give preference to politics instead of commercial factors.
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