LONDON, May 21: A 10 per cent saving in a year’s time would make a lot of difference to the financial health of PIA, according to the airline’s new managing director Capt Ejaz Haroon who is here chasing a couple of millions due to the airline but being withheld ‘under some legal ruse’.

He said the case pertained to the sale of a huge quantity of spare parts no more required by the airline.

“There was an offer for an out-of-court settlement but we thought we should pursue the case in the courts and expose those involved in the swindle.”

Answering questions about the financial health of the airline, he said he had a plan to achieve break-even in the balance sheet within a reasonable time by savings to be effected in all departments; from fuel to food.

He said a big hole of around Rs26 billion had already appeared in the current year’s budget as against the original gap of about Rs13 billion because of the escalating fuel prices which have shot up in the last six months or so.

He conceded that the accumulated burden on the airline had reached a debilitating Rs45 billion but said he would worry about that after he had achieved budgetary balance which he said he hoped to achieve by the end of next financial year.

He went into great technical details to explain how he would effect savings in fuel, but said he would finalise his plans only after consulting the pilots and the traffic controllers indicating that his fuel-saving scheme would perhaps focus more on the landing and take-off stages.

He said he had detected a lot of waste in the catering department as well and would try to find ways to economise on this front but without compromising on cabin service.

According to Capt Haroon, there was a lot of overlapping in the engineering department and here too he plans to talk to engineers to find out on how best to make the department cost effective.

“We could use the resultant spare engineering capacity to earn some foreign exchange by providing overhauling facilities to foreign airlines as other regional centres doing similar jobs in the neighbourhood are running to full capacity,” he hoped.

He said he did not favour selling the Roosevelt (US) and the Scrip (France) stating that the two hotels had lately gone into profit and were no more a burden on the airline, “and to be sure, they are great assets and the service industry is currently booming, so why should we sell these hotels?”