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PIA out on a limb?

One of Pakistan’s corporate successes of the 60s and 70s, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), is on the verge of becoming an embarrassing basket case. The momentum established in the previous two decades kept PIA going for the last decade, the cumulative effect of the rot that has set in since 1983 deepened during the PPP regime because of political interference in the day-to-day running, and except for a brief interregnum where Arif Abbasi swam against the political tide and the morale of PIA personnel was boosted enough to raise fleeting hopes that the Airline was back at a Jump-off Point for the 90s, PIA has been going downhill at an accelerated pace and unless major steps are taken to rectify this snowballing situation, our much vaunted and admired PIA, as we once knew it and were proud of, will be no more than a flying rural bus service.

An airline is supposed to carry passengers and cargo from one destination to another, ON TIME and IN COMFORT. While comfort has been the subject of an earlier article, we shall concentrate on the major priority of a discerning public, the ability of an airline to stay as per the given schedule. We shall study a length of 100 days and divide it into two periods of 50 days. Taking Arif Abbasi’s departure as Managing Director PIA as the mean date, June 30 can serve as the half way mark, the two periods then start from May 11, 1990 to June 30, 1990 as the FIRST period and July 01, 1990 to August 19, 1990 as the SECOND period.

Delay in schedules can be because of a number of reasons due to (1) Airport Security (2) Airport Services (3) Air Traffic Control (ATC) (4) Change of Aircraft (5) Connecting Passengers (6) Immigration (7) VVIP movement (8) Technical (9) Weather (10) “Consequential” and (11) “Other” reasons or Miscellaneous. While the rest are self-explanatory, “Consequential” and “Others” need explanation. If a flight is delayed at its place of origin for any of the other reasons and as such is consequently delayed at other sectors, the delay is NOT attributed by the Airline Reporting to the reason which took place originally but under “Consequential”, this is wrong but happens to be the practice. So if a delay took place in Islamabad due to “Aircraft Security” for ONE hour, the subsequent delay in the next station would be classified under “Consequential”. Similarly one is surprised to note that Flight Operations and Flight Services, two important factors governing the efficacy and efficiency of any airline are covered under “Others”. Obviously those responsible for reporting and monitoring the delays have devised a foolproof method to avoid detection in these two SIGNIFICANT areas of Airline Operations. The net result is that while PIA management may be able to fool the media, public and the bureaucratic bosses in Islamabad, in actual fact, they are fooling themselves by not being able to pinpoint the actual reason for delay and devise remedy thereupon to improve PIA’s efficiency.

During FIRST period of study of 50 days, a total of (1) 34 delays took place because of Airport Security (2) 139 delays due to Airport Services (3) 51 delays due to ATC (4) 44 delays due to change of aircraft (5) 28 delays due to “Connecting Passengers” (6) 2,379 delays due to “Consequential” (7) 111 delays due to Immigration (8) 343 delays due to “Other” reasons (9) 470 delays due to Technical reasons (10) 74 delays due to VVIP movement and (11) 270 delays due to Weather. During the second period of 50 days from July 01, 1990 to August 19, 1990 (1) Airport Security delays decreased by 2 to 32 (2) delays due to Airport services increased sharply by 311 to 450, (3) delays due to ATC decreased by 10 to 41 (4) delays due to change of aircraft decreased by 18 to 26 (5) delays due to “connecting passengers” increased by 43 to 71 (6) delays because of “Consequential” reasons increased sharply by as much as 1,367 to 3,746 (7) Immigration delays dropped to 88, a difference of 23 (8) delays because of “other” reasons increased by 47 to 390 (9) Technical delays accounted for increase by 32 to 50 (10) delays due to VVIP movement came down by 52 to 32 and (11) delays due to weather increased by 13 to 283. The statistics does show a marked increase in delays by 1,698, an increase of 43%.

Seeing the statistics in another way that concerns the passengers, as to how many delays took place in departure and arrival and how long were the delays, we come to the following findings for the FIRST 50 days period upto June 30, 1990 (1) delays of upto ONE hour in departures totalled 312.55 hours and on arrival 318.51 hours (2) Delays between ONE and SIX hours totalled 1681.62 hours on departure and 1555.21 hours on arrival (3) Delays of above 6 hours wasted 1701.49 hours on departure and 1479.67 on arrival (4) Below 15 minutes delays accounted for 37.95 hours on departure and 30.16 hours on arrival. The total delays thus amounted to 3739.64 on departure and 3383.55 on arrival. During the SECOND period (1) Delays of less than 1 hour on departure increased 101.11 hours to 413.64 hours while on arrival it increased 97.31 hours to 415.82 hours (2) Delays of between ONE and SIX hours increased on departure by 1226.19 to 2907.81 and on arrival by 1129.86 to 2685.67 (3) Delays of over SIX hours increased by 1926.52 to 3634.01 on departure and on arrival by 1473.50 to 2952.17 (4) Delays of less than 15 minutes decreased on departure by 1.80 hours and on arrival increased by 0.51 minutes, quite inconsequential. The total delay hours on departure rose by 3251.91 hours from 3739.64 and on arrival by 2700.18 hours from 3383.55, a SHARP rise of 86% and 79% respectively.

What does an analysis of this DATA show? Firstly it shows that the PIA performance has deteriorated badly in the second period upto August 19, 1990. Secondly, it shows that the marked deterioration has taken place in “Airport Services”, “Consequential”, “Others”, “Technical” and “Connecting passengers”, all related to the performance of the PIA staff. Thirdly it shows that while the delays increased by 43%, the hours of delays rose by an average of 82.5%, force-multiplied FOUR times, a deterioration in performance of 172%, a remarkable rate of decline of performance anywhere.

An overwhelming number of delays are in the “Consequential” category (6,215 delays out of 9,604) i.e. 64% of the delays. The next higher category of delays is due to Technical reasons accounting for 972 or over 10% of the total delays. “Other” reasons account for 733 delays or 8%. Delays of between ONE and SIX hours registered an increase of 73% in the SECOND period as compared to the FIRST period while delays of SIX hours registered a massive increase in the SECOND period of approximately 107% over the FIRST 50 days upto June 30, 1990. Overall the percentage of aircraft operating on schedule dropped from 65% in the first 50 days to only 35% in the second 50 days.

For a commercial airline, particularly a national flag carrier, these statistics are depressing, the performance graph deteriorating sharply after the departure of Arif Abbasi. Some mitigating circumstances are present because of evacuation of our expatriates by air because of the Gulf crisis. The bread earner for scheduled (with emphasis on the word “scheduled”) flights is punctuality which seems to have lost its pride of place among PIA’s qualities. At the same time responsibility is consistently being passed onto “Consequential” and “Other” reasons, a good way to hide accountability. Delays of any kind causes financial repercussions but delays of over 6 hours which is almost 50% of the total delays causes massive negative financial repercussions for the airline. Delays of over 6 hours involves a whole range of adjustments which include (1) changes of crew (2) aircraft (3) schedules (4) infrastructure (5) airfield limitations besides passenger service cost including (1) food (2) hotel and lay over charges (3) endorsements (4) cancellations, etc. In the single month of January 1990, total cost including hard currency at outstation came to Rs. 5.59 million.

PIA’s procedures no longer cater for modern day management needs and must be streamlined. Vertical and horizontal information flow originating on information Data Bases leaves much to be desired. Information is getting diffused and thus corrupted, reflecting on limitations and delays in decision-making, those decisions being clearly cost benefit effective and in the interest of the airline.

One cannot divorce the human factor from this alarming state of affairs. Before his exit as Managing Director due to as yet unexplained reasons, Arif Abbasi represented a bright professional hope for the Airline, a man who was a competent manager, inspiring and motivating the rank and file of PIA to recapture its lost prestige and status among the world airlines. Constrained by political perils, Arif Abbasi did turn the tide though one does not agree fully with his largesse to the rank and file of PIA in face of the average pay check in Pakistan. What is holding up the reappointment of Arif Abbasi back to the post of MD? Three Deputy Managing Directors have been appointed, even 30 cannot do the job, the buck has to stop somewhere, only a full-time competent professional can deliver the goods. Arif Abbasi may have run afoul of an influential Advisor to PM by terminating a lucrative GSA for Cargo for some favoured cousin and thus is targeted for personal vendetta. In the meantime, PIA is going gradually to seed.

As a national institution, PIA earns hard currency for the country while employing over 20,000 employees, nationally and internationally. A massive, direct and high-leverage intervention by a knowledgeable professional with proven Airline Management expertise is required in key operational activity. If Arif Abbasi is so much disliked by motivated persons within the Establishment that he cannot be brought back to head the Airline then we must look immediately for some suitable alternative. After all the present MD may go back to the PAF within a few months.

In the prevailing circumstances, PIA must advertise that the suitable alternative should be a clone of Arif Abbasi.

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