Karachi, August 15, 2019: On this occasion, I wish a very happy Independence Day to Pakistanis and PIA employees. We will strive to make this nation great as envisioned by our great leaders Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Muhammad Iqbal. Pakistan was achieved after great sacrifices of millions of Muslims of Indo-Pakistan sub-continent.
PIA, the national flag carrier founded by Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah is putting in great efforts to become an airline of choice providing convenient connections from Pakistan to rest of the World. Insha Allah our journey towards new heights shall continue to make it one of the best airlines of the World.
Al-Hamdolillah, once again PIA has proven it to the task and after more than 1.5 years of grounding of one Boeing 777 and A320 aircraft are now fully operational. It also gives me an immense pleasure to share that all 12 Boeing 777s are airworthy after very long time. A commendable feat accomplished by PIA Team and certainly deserves appreciation. I am also happy to share that we have been able to establish a full fledge maintenance facility for Check ‘A’ at Islamabad and Lahore for A320 and B777 respectively. This will have great impact on our performance and efficiency in future.
Masha Allah Hajj operation started with great success and this year we carried 82,000 plus Hujjaj to Makkah and Madinah. This is almost 25% more as of last year’s carriage. PIA’s efforts are being applauded widely even at the highest levels of country and abroad. I am confident about the success of Post Hajj operation too.
On performance side it is good to know that the indicators are moving in positive direction. Flight regularity, punctuality, seat factor and load factor all are rising thus pushing the economic indicators to comfortable zone. Our Bulk head seat initiative has been big success too. Our focus is on further improvement especially in the customer care area.
Flight frequencies have been increased and new routes have been added to PIA network such as Sialkot-Sharjah, Sialkot-Paris, Sialkot-Barcelona, Lahore-Muscat, Islamabad-Doha, Islamabad-Muscat, Peshawar-Sharjah, Peshawar- Al Ain, and Multan-Sharjah. Another Route Sialkot-London will commence in September.
We believe in merit and all promotions and foreign posting are now done purely on merit. Recently nearly 1,000 promotions of employees in flight serives of pay groups 4-8 were done on merit, this also includes employees who were not promoted for more than 15 years.
We also made great headway in our Co-Branding drive as the leading brands showed their confidence in our services and went for joint initiatives. I am sure in days to come we will have more brands joining us.
We are trying our best to make travel services more convenient and comfortable and more flight frequencies and routes will be introduced shortly.
I again wish all a very happy Independence Day. PIA Zindabad, Pakistan Paaindabad , CEO PIA Air Marshal Arshad Malik.
