August 24, 2007	Friday	Sha’aban 10, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Aug 23: Mounting losses due to eroding customer base forced the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to stop flights to 11 foreign destinations over the past few months and it is going to discontinue its service to yet another destination, Chicago, next month.

The airline with the fast shrinking international network has also decided to reduce frequencies on four destinations. The airline says it is suffering losses to the tune of Rs1 billion a month.

The destinations PIA discontinued its flights to in the past few months are Houston, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rome, Athens, Moscow, London, Nairobi, Urumqi, Singapore and Colombo, while Chicago would be taken off the PIA operation charts from Sept 15.

The destinations that are being operated with reduced frequencies are Paris, Birmingham, New York and Dubai.

Aviation experts see PIA being reduced to a regional carrier.

The decision to scale down operations comes at a time when foreign carriers flying from destinations abandoned by PIA for being commercially unattractive are either seeking increased frequencies or plan to resume their operations to Pakistan. Planned resumption of flights between Karachi-Lahore and Frankfurt by Lufthansa is just one example.

Other airlines planning to resume operations to Pakistan include Air France and the Swiss Airline. British Airlines is increasing its flights to Islamabad and is also considering flights to Karachi. Similarly, Cathay Pacific is increasing the number of its flights to Karachi.