WHEN the pension fund was established PIA voluntarily included what appeared to be a very magnanimous gesture — ‘The Commutation Plan’.

The ‘plan’ meant that a retiree could take a loan equal to five years of pension and pay it back by accepting half-pension for 10 years.

Full pension was to be restored thereafter. That never happened. The plan proved to be a Trojan gift horse.

Government establishments, armed forces and bankers offer commutation and restore pension in one way or the other, promptly, after 10 years of retirement. Not PIA.

The age of superannuation is 60 years. Inherent there are the tremendous stresses of nearly 40 years of jet flying. Add 10 years of retirement and you go beyond a pilot’s life expectancy.

The few pilots who do reach 70 years of age are too frail to fight the PIA mandarins. The pilots union has already rendered them toothless by depriving them of their only leverage — the right to vote. So these hapless old-timers just wither away fatalistically on half-pension.

In their day, retired pilots had always been willing volunteers, way beyond the call of duty. An air force of our size cannot afford to maintain a fleet of long-range, heavy jets. PIA pilots were always there.

With the crippling embargos slapped by the US in the 1965 and 1971 wars, PIA pilots flew all night, every night, negotiating Indian fighters and heavy ground-fire, bringing in direly needed ammunition and spare parts and transporting army divisions around the Indian peninsular.

There were many mishaps. Some crew members still lie in their watery graves deep in the Arabian Sea. It couldn’t have been done without these pilots. But PIA says: so what?

A PIA pensioner
Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2018