By Rafiq Jan
Famously known as “Orient airways” at the inception of Pakistan, PIA received a face-lift when it was launched as the indigenous Air transport company of the newly born state with a new name – Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
Spirits were high as the nation achieved its landmark freedom from British subjugation. Everyone gave their best in nourishing the saplings in this new country with honesty and diligence.
PIA was one such sapling that was nurtured by its honest founders.
PIA made its name as one of the most prestigious airlines of its time, when even US President J. F. Kennedy’s wife Jacqueline Onassis travelled with PIA from America to London; A symbol of dignity no other airline had ever acquired in the aviation era of the 1960s.
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PIA witnessed the best of protocols in the world, while then president Ayub Khan always received a Red-carpeted welcome, the moment he emerged out of his PIA plane in a foreign country. PIA’s planes looked like the queen in the backdrop of the royal receptions in the world’s capitals.
It helped start many Airlines in the world by the virtue of its big name and a very strong and solid management, engineering and training infrastructure. It had been looked after by some of the most ambitious leaders who worked hard to build it from scratch into an Airline that many developed countries envied.
U.A.E’s Emirates Airlines is also a brainchild of PIA, which took its first flight from Dubai to Karachi on 25th October 1985. The uniqueness of this inaugural flight was that it carried the chairman H.E Sheikh Ahmed Saeed Al-Maktoum and other dignitaries on board and the plane was PIA’s Airbus A310 operated by PIA captain Fazl-e-Ghani. He still reminisces the day of his first Emirates flight EK600.
I managed to find this special video clip which reminds me of how seriously, visionary leaders take business to make it an ultimate success and ensure that their success journey never stops:
PIA trained pilots, engineers, cabin crew for many foreign airlines in its state-of-the-art training center in Karachi!
PIA is my mother company too, where I started my dream career in aviation. I look back now after 40 years and it seems like a dream. The vague memories strike my soul with the pangs of despondency and pain. Until the 1970s, Pakistan thrived economically under the patronage of gentlemen administrators and thought leaders.
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Political changes in the 1980s brought about a deluge of upheavals which started eroding the foundations of our fast-growing country. Pakistan, by then, had already been affected with the virus of internal disharmony in the form of religious intolerance and corruption.
PIA was no exception, with the Airline suffering due to political nepotism.
Naturally, the downfall of our national airline continued exponentially. The governments kept changing more frequently with new slogans and promises, but the seeds of corruption that had been planted deep inside started growing.
The pandemic of corruption continued taking its toll as decades passed by.
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PIA pilots started consuming alcohol during duty, involved in smuggling, frequent misbehavior with ground staff and the passengers. Financial mismanagement peaked after the 1990s which pushed the Airline to start selling its most lucrative routes and few of the landmark overseas properties to other Airlines to collect revenue to cover its losses. This never works in anyone’s favor and our national airline kept sliding down on the performance graph.
In the coming years, PIA became a laughing stock. Several times, at different stops, the planes were stranded, denied refueling for unpaid dues, with no finances to buy fuel for the intended flights. It was because of these reasons that companies declined PIA’s credit cards and demanded cash payments, which is not a usual practice in the aviation business.
Political appointees at all top positions in PIA turned it into a rich grazing field. They came with pre-conceived plans to bring internal changes under the “pretext of improvements”, but at the cost of more spending only to get financial gains.
The picture above is just another glaring example of PMLN government’s decadence when the world’s “queen of airlines” had to resort to the superstitious gimmicks. Goat slaughtering near the airplane has shown that the airline virtually succumbed to the wounds inflicted by rogue leadership at all levels. This was following the unfortunate ATR plane crash near Hevellian. The investigations revealed that the plane was overdue for its mandatory maintenance but due to shortage of spare parts as well as the funds, it continued in service despite warnings and multiple refusals from pilots to fly that plane.
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In my lifetime and overseas Aviation experience of 40 years, I have witnessed the rise and fall of several airlines. The valuable lessons in those case studies were that only few among those airlines recovered from near extinction and the only sources behind their turn-around had largely been attributed to the honest and seminal leadership. Their countries were in good hands and the national institutions were intact to bring the dying companies back into business.
I hope that the new government in Pakistan genuinely investigates the predicament of PIA to keep the “mother of airlines” airborne the way it used to carry our national flag around the world.
The author is an aviation expert based in Qatar.
