PIA flight operations across country wind down as employees killed in Karachi clash

[kakaballi]

Re: PIA flight operations across country wind down as employees killed in Karachi cla

@phoenixdesi

…on a separate topic…help me understand one thing. Lets talk about international routes. PIA earns its international revenue by selling tickets at a price which is totally comparable to all other international airlines. For example i will pay PIA $1200-$1400 from NYC to Lahore for a round-trip and i will pay the same amount if i take emirates, qatar or kuwait. if anything PIA can be expensive. So PIA sales/plane should be comparable to its competitors on a given route.

but PIA’s employee expenses (salary+benefits etc) must be 1/3 of what European or middle eastern airlines have to pay to their employees. Out pilots, technicians, flight engineers, air stewards, support staff, ground staff has to be much much cheaper than the staff of american/European/middle eastern airlines

So even if we have 780 employees per plane, we should not be doing that bad financially vs other international airlines. no?

what it tells me that we must have a lot of other recurring annual expenses which are grossly mismanaged i.e. hotels in many expensive places which are highly underutilized, maintenance expenses related to old planes, not-so-attractive leasing terms, using planes for private reasons by politicians etc

More than the number of employees, it is the competence of existing employees that is under question. PIA is earning GROSS LOSS, meaning that the company cannot even cover its operating expenses through existing revenue stream. More than the expenses, it is lack of revenue from existing infrastructure that causes losses. Several profitable routs to middle east are now run by Etihad, Emirates or Saudi. Some routes to Far East and Europe have shut down completely. An airline which enjoyed virtual monopoly over several decades in domestic market now faces challenge from private carriers.

http://www.piac.com.pk/pia_about/profiles/2014/PIA-Annual-Report-2014-23052015.pdf

The employees are protesting against ANY kind of privatization, not protesting against opaque privatization. This clears any doubts about the confidence they have in their own abilities.

PIA has been treated as parking space for retired military men and active jiyalas. We can’t expect much from them even after several financial bail-outs from the government over the years.