24 Hours Late London-bound PIA Flight - Letter to Editor

[Abbas Ali]

Letter to English daily 'The News' editor about 24 hours delay suffered by PIA flight PK-757 from Lahore to London on March 1 due to some technical snags/problems in PIA Boeing 777 observed by Pakistan CAA officials at Lahore Airport.

Delayed flight

Friday, March 09, 2012

Passengers of PIA’s London-bound flight PK757, which was to depart from Lahore at 11:30 AM on March 1, had to endure a prolonged delay of over 24 hours. The flight finally departed on March 2 at 11:45 AM. Passengers were made to wait in the congested departure lounge till 7 PM in the evening with no facility to contact their relatives. Their families learnt of this delay and ordeal of over 300 passengers from television channels. I made many attempts to contact my niece stranded at the airport but failed.

The Boeing 777 aircraft, which arrived from Karachi on time, could not depart because it had defects which should have been rectified at Karachi before departure. My niece, who had come to attend a family marriage for just a week, was eager to get back to her home as her college classes started on March 2.

We were told that the CAA did not allow this aircraft to fly to London in its present state because PIA was again under scrutiny by the European Union’s safety evaluation of foreign aircraft. My question is: why did they allow an unserviceable aircraft to leave Karachi in the first place? Were the PIA and CAA authorities at Karachi sleeping, suddenly woke up in Lahore and caused great discomfort to passengers?

What is more shocking is that a serviceable B777, which had arrived from Manchester, was not deputed to fly to London because a VIP airline executive was travelling from Lahore to Karachi on PK303. It seems revenue passengers are at the bottom of the list of PIA in terms of priority and services.

What a fall for PIA from its days of glory, under Nur Khan and Rafique Saigol, to its present state where it is headed by incompetent and corrupt cronies.

Riaz Chaudhry
Lahore

Source: The News

Abbas