According to Export Promotion Bureau (EPEI) here on Friday, PIA has operated a dedicated freighter aircraft to take 9000 tons of mango shipments four times a week over a span of 100 days.
This flight took 160 tons per week to London, Oslo, Frankfurt, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
In addition, PIA offered 150 tons per week on three Combi flights direct to London and 160 tons per week on other passenger aircraft for Manchester and other destinations to UK.
Realising the increasing demand of mangoes in Canada, PIA deployed new aircraft Boeing-777 instead of A-310, which doubled the capacity on this sector.
After UK, the second biggest point for mango uplift was Saudi Arabia where the airline operated daily flight of Boeing-747 to Jeddah and Airbus to Riyadh and Dammam from Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad.
It may be noted that Export Promotion Bureau has provided a financial assistance of Rs 22.5 million to PIA from the Export Development Fund during 2003- 2004 to facilitate availability of cargo space for the export of perishable items, like mango, kinnoo, etc.
The PIA-EPB partnership has created a marked change as air cargo space is no longer an issue for perishable items.
However, this arrangement did not affect lifting of dry cargo as the national carrier offered 37 percent additional space to exporters of dry cargo during the year under review. EPB said that this co-operation would continue in the future to facilitate exporters.
It may be pointed out that export of mangoes has surged by 23 percent to cross 24 million dollars till July, 2004.