PRIME Minister’s adviser on aviation has asked senate body to ‘shut down’ PIA (May 19). This statement reminds one of another such unprofessional and unpragmatic statement by a former PIA chairman way back in 1972.

After the fall of Dhaka, that gentleman issued a statement that since PIA operations had been reduced to half owing to loss of half of the country, PIA would lay off half of its employees and would sell off half of PIA’s fleet. This was the most unprofessional approach by a person who had no knowledge of the commercial civil aviation industry.

The same is the case with the present adviser on aviation. If someone is sincerely interested in reviving PIA, the only solution is to lay off all political appointees from top to bottom, restore merit in selection and promotions and abolish the quota system in PIA.

It is suicidal to maintain a quota system in a commercial organisation and wish to compete with the best in the aviation business.

Last but not least, the government must ban unions and associations. At present, every major political party is backing a union in PIA, and the result is before us.

The PIA management should re-introduce policies formulated and implemented by Nur Khan and implement them in letter and in spirit.

Abid Mahmud Ansari
Islamabad

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PIA has once again sullied the good name of our country. British authorities discovered heroin from the flag carrier. Recently, the Pakistani inspectors searched another PIA plane and found 20kg of heroin.

The question is: why did the Customs, FIA, Anti-Narcotics Force and other law-enforcement agencies fail to inspect such illegal things before they are taken to the aircraft? The answer is: our security agencies are poorly equipped and have outdated equipment. Most importantly, the security officers have failed to deliver.

The prime minister must take action to get rid of this mess.

Allahyar Khan Kalwar
Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017