RAWALPINDI: Prime Minister’s Adviser on Aviation retired air marshal Farhat Hussain Khan held a meeting with the chief executive officers (CEOs) of airlines, including that of financial crisis-ridden Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), and discussed challenges being faced at domestic and international level.

According to a press release issued by the Ministry of Aviation, the meeting was informed of challenges being faced at the domestic and international levels and a plan of action was discussed to resolve them.

The PM’s adviser for aviation assured all CEOs of airlines of full cooperation from the ministry to resolve the problems the airlines were facing.

Meanwhile, the financial and fuel crisis of PIA is continuing. Though the management has chalked out a flight schedule in line with the availability of fuel to avoid cancellation of flights, delays were continuing due to some reasons.

According to sources, the government is considering changes in the top-level management, apparently to expedite the privatisation of the national flag carrier. For this purpose, two former CEOs of PIA were consulted by the Privatisation Commission to finalise terms of reference (TORs).

However, the PIA, which has been going through a severe financial and fuel crisis and so far has cancelled about 528 flights, including domestic and international flights, claimed that its affected operations are on the way to recovery as fuel supply has been improving.

The airline’s spokesperson further claimed that PIA’s flight operations are likely to become normal with further improvement in the fuel situation in the next few days.

Emergency landing

Meanwhile, a private airlines flight from Islamabad to Karachi made an emergency landing after about 15 minutes of its take-off due to a problem in its engine.

According to sources, the private airline’s flight from Islamabad took off for Karachi at about 5:42pm on Monday but came back to Islamabad at about 6pm due to a fault in its one engine.

After the pilot of the aircraft noticed malfunctioning of one of its engines, he informed the Air Traffic Control Tower about it.

Immediately after the control tower was informed, emergency arrangements were made at the airport and the aircraft landed safely at 6pm.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2023