ISLAMABAD: Air travellers across the country heaved a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday after the Pakistan Airline Pilots’ Association (Palpa) announced it would temporarily call off its strike, on the intervention of a parliamentary committee, provided that pilots’ genuine concerns were addressed and permanent solutions to the crisis at hand were found.
Chaired by Senator Talha Mehmood, the Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat gave all stakeholders — including Palpa, PIA and the Aviation Division — two days to come up with a workable solution to the dispute.
Though a blame game continued for much of the committee’s proceedings, the chairman and members of the committee advised both sides to show more flexibility. In the interests of creating an atmosphere conducive to talks, Palpa announced it would defer its protest until Friday, Oct 9, when the Senate panel would meet again to endorse a possible agreement between the two sides.
The committee asked officials to review the decision to cancel three pilots’ licences and sought the withdrawal of a show-cause notice issued to one of the pilots, who the committee was told had acted wisely to save the prime minister’s life when an ATR had been given start up, taxi and line up clearance at a time when the PM’s aircraft was about to land.
Aviation Division Secretary Mohammad Ali Gardezi, PIA Chairman Nasser N.S. Jaffer, PIA Flight Operations Director Captain Salman Azhar, Palpa President Captain Amir Hashmi, Palpa Vice President Captain Sadiq Rehman also attended the meeting.
Captain Hashmi said all that his organisation wanted was the implementation of a working agreement with pilots that both the CAA and PIA had signed. He said that Palpa was ready even to revise the agreement if there were any flaws in it.
Referring to Tuesday’s events, the aviation secretary asked how it was possible for 21 pilots to fall sick on the same day. He also pointed out that pilots were drawing salaries anywhere between Rs0.9 million to Rs1.5m.
During committee proceedings, the PIA chairman confirmed that the airline was overstaffed. He said that ideally the airline’s employee-to-aircraft ratio should be 120-170 per aircraft, but actually stood at around 500, given that PIA only had 35 operational aircraft.
Talking to Dawn, Captain Amir Hashmi said, “Though we have submitted our all demands to the Senate Standing Committee, we have agreed to resume flights from today (Wednesday) and pledged that we will fly for 12 hours without an extra pilot.”
He said that it was Palpa’s demand to provide an extra pilot for a flight of longer than ten hours, but after today’s development, the pilots agreed to operate longer flights without taking an extra pilot.
As of Friday, at least 90 flights had been cancelled or delayed due to the pilots’ protest. However, PIA Spokesman Daniyal Gilani told Dawn that flight operations had returned to normal and no PIA flights were cancelled or delayed on Wednesday.
Increased fares
Civil Aviation Authority Spokesman Pervez George told Dawn that following the PM’s directives, the CAA DG had met the representatives of private airlines, who made it clear that they had not increased fares. He said that the airlines’ automated revenue management system kicked in when passengers were purchasing tickets right before departure, at which point tickets became more expensive than usual.
He said that a report on public complaints of hiked airfare due was sent to the authorities concerned.
Farooq Ahmed, a travel agent, told Dawn that the increase in fares was not unusual as it goes up in Umra season due to a rise in the number of travellers.
Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2015
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