There is no end in sight to the issues confronting the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), at least in near future, as technical faults in planes have started taking a toll on the airline’s flights’ operation, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Monday.
Quoting its sources, the channel reported that passengers had to face lot of inconvenience due to delay in the arrival and departure of flights.
Similarly, they added, there were issues of poor management on international flights, heading from Jeddah to Lahore, Medina to Islamabad and Karachi to Riyadh.
Likewise, there is a delay of several hours in the departure of flights from Islamabad airport for Quetta, Gilgit and Karachi, sources revealed.
Complaints have also started surfacing after airbuses are being used rather than Boeing planes due to their technical issues.
Sources disclosed that there had been cases in which the passengers outnumbered the number of seats in planes due to which some of the passengers had to be left behind at the airports.
They further said that in all eight planes of the PIA were presently operational.
Out of these, only three Boeing planes were operational which commuted between different cities of the country and Kuala Lumpur, Toronto and other destinations in the world, sources added.
Similarly, airbuses link different Pakistani cities with Dubai, Oman, Qatar and stations within the country.
However, when the PIA’s spokesman was contacted for comments, he said that the airline had seven, and not three, Boeing planes which were operational.
He admitted that although the flights’ operation had suffered on some routes; still there were no issues on other routes. “We plan to cut short the flights’ schedule in order to deal with the issue of delay in the arrival and departure of flights,” he informed, and added that routine flights’ operation would be restored in three to four days.
Reporter: Tayyab Saif