Great people no longer fly with it

It is a pity that those of us who have seen the zenith of national carrier when PIA was ranked as one of the top five airlines of the world are destined to see its nadir also. One is saddened by its decline to the stage when no option is left except to privatize it which in other words means selling house hold items. It is always painful to sell silver of one’s in times of financial distress.
Hardly a day goes by when the PIA isn’t in the news for the wrong reasons . Day before yesterday, its Peshawar bound flight from Muscat had to make an emergency landing in Karachi due to failure of its hydraulic system. Punctuality in the observance of flight timing which once was the hallmark of our national carrier when persons like Air Marshal Asghar Khan and Air Marshal Nur Khan used to head PIA is now a word unknown to it .
Some of the chairmen of PIA made indiscriminate and unnecessary recruitment of staff in it in excess of actual requirement of PIA on political basis with the result that it became overstaffed eating up lot of its revenue on their pay and salaries which could have been spent on the purchase of new aircraft and other allied matters like the maintenance of its existing fleet etc. etc.