November 21, 2003	Friday	Ramazan 25, 1424

KARACHI, Nov 20: The PIAC expects to fetch profit of Rs4.366 billion during its next fiscal Jan-Dec 2004 as compared to expected profit of Rs3.334 billion for the fiscal 2003.

The Board of Directors of PIAC in its 275th meeting here on Thursday approved the corporation’s growth-oriented budget.

It also projected a growth of 15.3 per cent in passenger traffic, 8.8 per cent growth in freight revenue, thrust on capturing increased market share and floatation of additional capacity.

The board was informed that the airline would start operations to Glasgow, Houston, Almaty, Tashkent, Barcelona/Madrid and to increase the existing frequency to UK, USA, Canada and Gulf.

The board was informed that besides concentrating on marketing alliances and speedex courier service, the airline was also evaluating the potential for addition of Tehran, Damascus, Istanbul and Nairobi to network, improvement in the reservation system including auto-firming of the flights and adoption of transparent pricing policy.

It noted that the corporation’s overall financial health, growth in traffic and revenue and becoming a “Billion Dollar” revenue generating airline by end of 2004 as three state-of-the-art 777 aircraft were also being inducted in early 2004.

The meeting was chaired by PIAC chairman Ahmed Saeed and attended by Maj General (Retd) Muhammad Ashraf Chaudhry, Dr. Sughra Junejo, M.H.K Khaishgi, Javed Saifullah Khan and Zakir Mehmood.—APP