KARACHI, March 20: The Chairman PIA, Tariq Kirmani said that following the operational restrictions imposed by the European Union on some of the PIA aircraft, the airline was able to re-evaluate its unprofitable routes and create hubs for the maximum convenience of passengers to overcome the operation’s restriction.

In an annual message sent to PIA employees, the chairman termed “unfair, unjust and discriminatory” the EU treatment meted out to PIA and said that when he visited the EU Air Transport office on March 2 the decision to restrict PIA had already been taken.

“Thanks to the Revenue Management System, we got an opportunity to critically review and rationalise our network structure. We were able to re-evaluate our unprofitable routes and create hubs for maximum convenience of our passengers to overcome the EU limitation,” he said.

He said starting March 25, PIA will return to normal with minor adjustments of frequencies into UK, Europe and North America. “Hidden in all this was also a silver lining, for whereas this restriction had a negative impact on PIA revenues of one per cent, the cost to PIA will go down almost six per cent,” he added.

Mr Kirmani assured the employees of a clean working environment, better facilities and safety.

He said that outsourcing and joint venture agreements with Swissport and Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS), have already been signed and joint venture formation is in progress. Lufthansa Tecknik have been contracted to help acquire an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.