Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Monday claimed to have witnessed improvement in all business Key Performance Indicator (KPI) during last quarter of last calendar year. According to PIA spokesman, new routes were added and others were suspended based on their performance as per modern airlines industry practice. Similarly, from time to time PIA has been adding new stations along with rationalizing and restructuring its poor performing routes. The 2018 operating plan has been developed and was based around the core idea of becoming economically viable.

As part of the five year business plan, detailed and comprehensive studies have been done minutely for each sector to rationalize the network. It includes moving towards a cost efficient fleet and the moving of capacity from loss making routes to potentially high yield routes. He said that PIA would also expand to new potential routes with relatively lesser fleet with higher planned utilization of existing fleet and would also induct more aircraft in 2018 in addition to B777-300 of 442 capacity already added in August last year.

With lesser number of wet lease aircraft and with new addition of cost efficient dry lease aircraft, swapping and expanding capacity on better potential existing and new routes, PIA will be moving towards its clear goal of revenue optimization with a lower cost base and this will have a positive impact on operating profit and losses, he said. Moreover, he said that the last quarter of 2017 witnessed improvement in all business KPI, which demonstrated that PIA was moving in the right direction, he maintained.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018