TAILWIND wrote:boeing787 wrote:Omairi7 wrote:I just really hope govt puts very big tax on Karachi airport for international flights. Also other airports as well where me3 fly and use that money to upgrade our airports. If they're fine, use the surplus to make new airports.
Sadly the govt gives privileges away for peanuts and Emirates alone posts 1.5$ billion in profits.
Protectionism never works, competition does. Just take the example of auto industry in Pakistan, what have we achieved after giving all sorts of incentives and protection to the cartel of 4 car manufacturers, substanadard product and high costs.
M3 operating so many flights to Pakistan shows that there is a market. Leaving aside the quality, do PIA and other pvt airlines have the capacity to take up this load, can PIA operate 9 flights a day to DXB, 2 to AUH and 2 to SHJ?????? EK alone operates 65 weekly flights to pakistani destinations.
Putting big tax on Khi airport is not the solution.
I doubt having $25 tax charge on ME3 airlines is going to drive them away. Sure PIA can pay $25 too, but PIA lets say have 5 flights international. but ME3 have 15 or whatever amount of international flights. If we cannot improve PIA, at least use money to improve airport. Mind you, airport tax has to be used for airports, not PIA. Or just have tax only for ME flights and use that money to set up middle east terminal. Oh and I do reckon that $25 tax will be put on probably tickets of people, but maybe national carriers can be forgiven by giving them subsidy, so they don't increase ticket price.
PIA is gov't entity. If gov't is giving protectionism to PIA, then they can make it work well in favour of public. Canada gives protectionism to Air Canada, and gives only 3 weekly flights to ME each, which it has bailed out in the past. At the same time the gov't will push Air Canada to work good. This boils down to incompetent management. Protectionism is good if the management is competent and gov't makes it work in favour of public.
Before I forget, if we had kept away ME from operating too many flights, we would still have British Airways, Swiss air, Lufthansa and many other airlines serving Pakistan. But it is simply not profitable for them, so they settle for code share. So imagine if one day Canada lets ME3 operate ulimited flights to Canada. Soon British airways will lose east Asia and Australia sector. Air Canada will lose pacific sectors (Australia/Japan etc). Many european and american airlines will lose east, south east and north east asian sectors.
Yes it is true that security is keeping away many airlines, but look at their map and see how they fly to countries with worse security than Islamabad/Karachi airport. And if BA or Swiss air stay away for security reasons, why ME3 continue to fly Pakistan? Simply too much $$.
Finally, PIA will never be able to compete in near future. Someone in Paris, Frankfurt or other places will prefer to take emirates with like 9 daily flights to Karachi. No more waiting in transit, which is very big concern. They know PIA is late 2-3 hours anyway so why not enjoy duty free shopping and boost UAE economy further.
Student of Economics. My brother works for Air Canada.
