KARACHI: The Pakistan Airline Pilots’ Association (Palpa) has said that pilots would refuse to fly if the Pakistan International Airlines management did not review its “unfair and unjust” taxation policy.

Palpa chief Amir Hashmi said in a statement on Tuesday that while the pilots were being unjustly and unfairly taxed, the PIA had hired a couple of people at a tax-free salary of around Rs 2 million a month.

He said that pilots in private Pakistani airlines paid less income tax than their counterparts in the PIA though both earned the same salary.

Citing an example, he said that a first officer of Shaheen Airlines paid Rs19,005 as income tax on a salary of Rs435,867 while one of PIA’s pilots paid Rs213,007 as income tax on a salary of Rs419,607.

He said that Palpa’s demand was that a similar taxation policy should be adopted so that PIA pilots did not feel that they were being discriminated against by the government.

Mr Hashmi said that the PIA management, which was already top-heavy with 16 directors, 44 general managers and 92 deputy general managers, hired two general managers with no airline experience on tax-free monthly salaries ranging between Rs1.8 million and Rs2.2m, in violation of rules.

This was done at a time when PIA aircraft were running empty on routes which used to be most lucrative.

He warned that pilots would stop flying if the management did not change its taxation policy.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2014