LAHORE: The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has received poor response from public relations and media management firms for its plan to improve its image by hiring a PR firm, forcing the national carrier to extend its deadline for submission of bids by 10 days.

Through advertisements in the last week of October, PIA had invited bids from companies specialising in media management, crisis management, event management and damage control/image building.

The deadline for participating in the bidding process was Nov 17. But because of the poor response, particularly from reputed PR firms, the PIA management has now extended the deadline till Nov 27.

“Hardly any reputed PR firm is interested in taking part in the bidding process, considering that PIA is a ‘dead product’ to sell,” an official of a well-known PR company told Dawn.

“The airline should have learnt from the response it got when it had advertised back in August.

The management of my firm initially thought about participating in the bidding, but decided against it because it could not find enough positives about PIA,” he said.

PIA had deferred the plan in August when nine PR firms had participated in the bidding process, none of which met the criteria set by its management.

“We have extended the bidding date till Nov 27 because we want more PR firms to participate in it,” PIA spokesman Rafique Zardari told Dawn on Friday.

Some senior PIA officials termed the move a ‘futile exercise’ on which a staggering amount would be spent.

Expressing surprise over the plan, a PIA official wondered as to how could the management think of engaging a PR firm when the organisation was in a huge financial mess.

“Instead of spending money on a PR firm, PIA should improve its image by improving its service,” he said.

The main problems of PIA were Rs250 billion in accumulated losses, flight delays, shortage of aircraft, suspension of several international routes and overstaffing, he added.

Published in Dawn, November 15th , 2014