AS the old saw — so famously misquoted by George W Bush — goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” For the second time PIA has cancelled a flight I was booked on within a period of a fortnight, so I suppose it’s shame on me.

This time, I was booked to fly to Colombo from Karachi, and turned up at the airport, only to be informed that the flight had been arbitrarily cancelled. Furious, I stalked into the airline`s office where I was informed by an extremely rude staff member that the flight would not be taking off because of `operational reasons` What `operational reasons` I demanded of the shift in-charge? This worthy consulted a computer screen he could barely read and pronounced that the reasons were, well, operational. Finally, I was given a computer printout transferring me to Sri LankaAirlines that, luckily for me, was operating a flight the same day.

This experience seemed to lend substance to the persistent online rumour that this government is deliberately running PIA into the ground so when the new private air company, Indus Airlines, does become operational, it won`t have much competition. While I am not a great one for conspiracy theories, I am beginning to suspect there`s more to the recent spate of cancellations than can be explained by `operational reasons` One story doing the rounds is that PIA has been unable or unwilling to pay a supplier, and is therefore not receiving spares, thus grounding a part of its fleet.

Its powerful union is not permitting management to charter planes to fully restore its operations. As it loses passengers due to its incompetence, it will haveeven less money in the kitty to maintain its aircraft.

Old PIA hands are fond of reminiscing how they helped establish Emirates, the Dubai-based airline that has been winning awards year after year. The gap between the two operations is now akin to the difference between a luxury yacht and a dhow manned by Somali pirates.

I flew to Dubai for a short visit last week on Emirates, and was impressed by the smooth, wellhoned service. I was last in the city-state over ten years ago, and was not prepared for the changes that have taken place over the last decade. Skyscrapers mushroomed across the cityscape, but on closer examination, a large number were skeletons, seemingly propped up by giant, motionless cranes.

In the recently built Al-Buzarg area of the city where I stayed,the wide streets were eerily empty. I was to discover later that everybody was in shopping malls.

The Burj-al-Khalifa, currently the world`s tallest building, soars over the surrounding shops and villas with a manmade lake at its base. Periodically, music soars and a bank of fountains pump water to a huge height in time to the rhythm. But after sunset, most of the windows of the apartments in the Burj-al Khalifa are dark, as are so many across the city.

Clearly, Dubai is still suffering from the pain of over-construction and the global recession.

Thousands of expat executives and construction workers have left, and many investors have been badly burned by get-richquick schemes that went belly up.

Many in India and Pakistan had paid for apartments that they hoped to rent. These punters havelittle to show for their investment but worthless documents.

And yet, tourists continue to flock to Dubai for its shopping and desert safaris. The Dubai Mall is a depressingly enormous market with shops selling goods from around the world. Full of locals and foreigners milling around in search for bargains, it was my vision of hell. I had wandered in to visit the huge aquarium, but was deterred by the long lines. Nevertheless, I could see thousands of fish behind a vast expanse of plate glass.

I was reminded of the excellent aquarium established by the Japanese in Karachi`s Clifton area near the sea. I often took my son there, and he was delighted to see the stunning collection of jewel-like fish. Over the years, tanks became empty as their inhabitants died, but weren`t replaced. Now the buildingstands empty and derelict, bearing testimony to the city`s downward spiral that began in the midEighties.In a sense, the opposing trajectories of the Dubai and Karachi aquariums symbolise the different directions the two cities have taken. Dubai has boomed, attracting investment and visitors from around the world.

Karachi, on the other hand, has scared foreigners and their capital away with its unending violence and chaos.

I lived in Karachi when the MQM arrived on the scene, and witnessed the steady rise in the level of violence since then.

Multinationals pulled out their offices, moving to the Gulf. Local companies relocated to Lahore or Islamabad, and new investment went to Punjab rather than to the crime-ridden port city.

Now, Karachi is an ugly, violent city with little to attract visitorsor capital. Young people going to Lahore or Islamabad are struck by how much development has taken there while their city has an air of permanent neglect. But with criminal gangs backed by political parties perpetually at each other`s throats, who would want to invest a dime or a day here, unless they had to for family reasons?We tend to forget that until the early Eighties, Karachi was the envy of other cities in Pakistan. It was relatively modern, and was a magnet for workers and entrepreneurs from across the country. Now it is a sad shadow of its past glory, exploited by politicians and shady builders fronting for criminals.

In the same period, Dubai has grown into a modern city that has reinvented itself into a business and travel hub for the whole region. The city is clean, well run and safe, everything Karachi is not.