KARACHI, July 17: PIA Chairman Ahmad Saeed has said that the national flag-carrier is prepared to operate its flights in India sector. However, a decision to this effect has to be taken by the government, he added.

He was replying to questions at a briefing to newsmen at the PIA headquarters here on Thursday about the airline’s performance over the past six months.

He said PIA had earned a profit of Rs50 million in April-June period — a traditionally lean period — this year as against the loss of Rs544 million during the corresponding period last year. “This year’s profit in a lean period is a record,” he said.

Likewise, he pointed out, PIA earned a total of Rs1.5 billion profit from January to June this year as against Rs533 million during the corresponding period last year.

Regarding implications of the closure of Indian airspace, the PIA chief said that though the airline had to suspend its 12 flights a week but it made only seven per cent, Rs200 million in terms of annual financial turn over, of the entire operation.

The Indian airlines, the PIA chief maintained, appeared eager to resume its overflying operation because of it had been suffering more than PIA. The closure of airspace, he added, had affected 100 flights of that airline.

About any possibility of the resumption of normal air traffic between the two countries, he revealed that Islamabad had been seeking an assurance from New Delhi that the latter would not resort to unilateral decisions about airspace closure in future.

Mr Ahmad Saeed told newsmen that out of the eight Boeing-777 aircraft, for which an order had been placed last year, two aircraft would be received by January next. The down payment amounting to US$162 million has already been made, he added.

He said that following the induction of the aircraft into the PIA fleet, the international traffic would increase though several other factors would have to be considered. He elaborated that at present, PIA mainly depended on ‘ethnic traffic’ (regional passengers) as international traffic was not available due to the reluctance of American and Japanese nationals to visit Pakistan.

He said that the deployment of extra capacity in high yield markets and weeding out uneconomical routes had helped the national airlines to attain profit of Rs3.5 billion in the year 2003.

Recounting other factors which helped in the attainment of profit during the period, he said they included a nine per cent increase in capacity, 10 per cent traffic growth and 11 per cent raise in freight.

Besides, he said, there would be a saving of Rs348 million due to the 4.5 per cent reduction in interest rates (9.5 per cent) on loans.

Referring to the reintroduced additional flights between Lahore and Chicago and between Quetta and Mashhad, the PIA chief said both the sectors were very successful.

Mr Saeed said that in addition to the disbursement of bonus, amounting to Rs200 million, among the PIA employees of all groups — from corporate to lowest ones —, the airlines had granted a raise of 20 per cent in their gross salary. This, he said, would make an overall impact of Rs1.2 billion. The pay raise would be effective January 2003 as per the PIA’s commitment, he added.

He said that the airlines had done away with the old procedure of promotions based on length of service. Henceforth, only merit would be the criterion, he said.

In recruitment also, the sole criterion would be merit as PIA wanted to have new faces in the management and planned to induct 100 MBAs who would have to obtain 45 per cent marks in the tests to be conducted by the IBA.

After interviews by PIA, the selected employees would be offered jobs on contract basis, the PIA chief said, adding that no fresh appointee would be offered a permanent job in future and the job contracts would range between five and ten years.

In reply to a question, he said that there were a total of 15,000 employees in PIA apart from about 4,500 contractual ones. These contractual workers, he said, would be offered direct employment on contract basis with a package which would give them a raise of 100 per cent in wages.

Replying to another question, he said that more than 700 PIA employees reach superannuation age every year and with this number, it was expected that by the year 2023, the entire workforce would consist of contractuals.

Expressing his satisfaction over the performance of the airline in view of the prevailing circumstances in the aviation industry, he hoped that even better results were expected in the next six months.