Minister of State for Defence Arbab Muhammad Zahir has informed the National Assembly here on Wednesday that the government would conduct an inquiry in the alleged complaints against the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on the issue of non-availability of tickets on various domestic routes.
A numbers of MNAs raised the issue that the passengers were unable to timely get booking of seats. However, later passengers informed about the empty seats on various domestic routes. Speaker NA has also raised the same issue during the session and directed the concerned authorities to ensure availability of tickets to the passengers on domestic routes.
Giving justification of increased Umra and Hajj fares, Minister of State for Defence said that the flights coming back from Saudi Arabia are usually without passengers, which requires some increase in Umra fares. He said that the airline has incurred a total expenditure of Rs 10,088,750 on tail branding of its aircraft during the year 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08.
Arbab Zahir said that it was the decision of previous PIA management to decorate aircraft for promoting culture of provinces on the aircrafts. However, presently, tail branding of aircraft is not being done. In a written reply, Minister for Defence Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar said that PIA has suffered a loss of Rs 35.9 billion during 2008. The major contributory factor for this loss included change in rupee/dollar rate; increase in oil prices and provision for old liabilities/unusual/non-recurring items.
The airline has taken certain remedial steps to control the losses and bring about sustainable improvements in the losses. The measures included review of non performing routes; redeployment of capacity on high yield market; aggressive marketing; exploitation of charter business opportunities; cost containment initiatives and exploring third party business avenues in engineering.
In addition to this, the Ministry of Defence has directed PIA to implement cost cutting measures; improve engineering and maintenance system; formulate key performance indicators and work on determined time limits to achieve them and ensure appropriate fiscal responsibility and accountability at all levels.
There is no firm proposal to purchase new commercial aircraft during the year, 2009-10. To a question, he further said that the internal audit of PIA is carried out as per the Annual Plan, prepared in advance, duly approved by management and the audit committee of PIA Board. The last annual audit of PIA accounts was carried out for the financial year 2008.
Discrepancies highlighted by the audit are decided at different levels ie management, DAC and PAC and appropriate remedial measures/ administrative actions are invariably taken. Responding to another query, he said that no aircraft of PIA fleet went through an engine change during the period from March, 2008 to-date.
According to Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) programme, ramp inspections were carried out on PIA aircrafts coming to Europe. Based on this inspection, the European Commission (EC) imposed a partial operating ban in March 2007 on PIA's 20 aircrafts out of the fleet of 42.
The said ban remained imposed on these aircraft for nine months. Based on PIA corrective measures certified by CAA Pakistan, the ban was lifted in November 2007. He said that the PIA has received a total amount of Rs 933,592,000 from the federal government on account of mark-up reimbursement during the current financial year 2008-09 to be treated as GOP equity in the Corporation.
The government assistance was required to obtain financing facilities at preferential pricing to meet PIA liquidity crunch caused by soaring fuel prices and heavy debt servicing. Mark up payments on this debt was to be picked up by GOP as part of the financial and operational restructuring plan approved by the GOP, he added.