After 40 Years of PIA……

For PIA, events have come one full circle. It was nearly four decades ago in 1982 that the martial law government of Gen Zia Ul Haq decided that enough was enough and the highly politicized employees unions could no longer be allowed to destroy the national flag carrier.

Martial Law Regulation 52 was imposed on the airline, unions were banned, a number of senior staff were (was) sent packing and an internationally credible firm was hired to advise the airline on its future course of restructuring and rehabilitation.

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Air Marshal Waqar Azim was appointed the Managing Director and despite the overbearing presence of the then Secretary General Defence as the ex officio Chairman, he turned the airline around both in terms of revenue and service. In less than three years, PIA was flying high once again and it was in those years that it convinced the Dubai rulers to establish their own airline rather than allow the Bahrain based Gulf Air to identify itself as the official carrier of UAE.

Thus, was born the Emirates Airline with an Airbus and a Boeing 737-300 on wet lease from PIA. Marketing functions, flight and cabin crew were all provided by PIA. The rest is history. PIA has crash landed to where it was prior to the MLR 52 imposed by Gen Zia Ul Haq while Emirates is now amongst the first choice airlines of the world. It is in this background that we believe the imposition of the Essential Services Act and banning of all employees unions in PIA except the CBA are much needed and overdue steps to save the national flag carrier from complete grounding.

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The PIA unions have been proxies for political parties and have been the main cause of over employment, complete indiscipline and unviable and indeed undeserved compensation packages forcibly extracted from the management. It is hoped that the airline’s management will now use this space to quickly put together imaginative and innovative rehabilitation measures to pull the airline out of a very very deep financial crisis and climb out of the turbulence.

For that, it will also need financial stimulus from the government as is being done by many Corona stricken countries for their flag carriers. That done, (That is done) it will be for Air Marshal Arshad, the present CEO, to repeat the performance of his illustrious predecessor from the PAF.