PESHAWAR, Sept 16: Many Umra passengers of the Frontier province have failed to get their seats confirmed in PIA flights despite the provision of four additional planes from Peshawar to Jeddah in the last 11 days
, sources and travel agencies told Dawn here on Thursday.
The national flag carrier had provided extra flights from the Peshawar International Airport to Jeddah on Sept 4, 7, 10 and 15, after a demand from the Umra passengers of the NWFP, these sources said. But around 1,500 passengers failed to get their seats confirmed. Travel agents could not get the seats for their clients through the computerised system of reservation introduced by the PIA management recently, they said.
"But this system has created problems for the Umra passengers in the NWFP, because whenever the PIA opened reservation, within three to four minutes, the seats were reserved by travel agents from other cities," said these sources.
In the last four flights, most travel agents from Lahore and Faisalabad got seats of their clients confirmed, depriving the Umra passengers from the Frontier province.
The additional airbus flight from Peshawar to Jeddah with the capacity of 227 passengers airlifted only 15 Umra passengers from the province on Wednesday night, as the rest were from Punjab.
Interestingly, 20 passenger from Punjab could not reach the Peshawar airport in time and the airbus took off to Jeddah with 20 vacant seats," said a travel agent, who had cancelled many seats of his clients in PIA flights and reserved them in other international airlines.
The 20 vacant seats not only deprived the NWFP passengers to perform Umra in time, but also caused loss to the national exchequer, he added. The PIA press liaison officer, Nadeem Babar, and district manager Sajjad Noor, when contacted, denied to offer any comments on the issue of Umra passengers from the NWFP.
Meanwhile, the national flag carrier has increased the Umra fare from Thursday, sources told Dawn. The fare had been increased from Rs28,570 to Rs32,570, official sources confirmed.
The management has also decided to levy fuel surcharge on all international flights from Oct 1. The surcharge on single journey ticket would be Rs350 and on return ticket it would be double of that amount, the official sources said.
The airport tax might also be increased from Rs100 to Rs250 from Oct 1. This increase was proposed by the Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA) and the PIA administration had accepted the proposal.
