PIA fares versus ME3

[Amaad Lone]

Just booked two tickets for April 2nd to London.

Emirates was 91,000 while PIA was 107,000.

Which idiot will pay 18% more and travel on a flight with ZERO entertainment.

Would not mind paying the extra fare if the PIA had SOME on board entertainment, I do love the direct flight but remembering the last miserable flight of staring at the ceiling for 8 hours made me select Emirates.

Even with higher fares PIA loses 3.5 billion a month.

Maybe they need to charge 100% then other airlines, after all its the shortest flight between point A and point B.

[faisal-777]

Just booked two tickets for April 2nd to London.

Emirates was 91,000 while PIA was 107,000.

Which idiot will pay 18% more and travel on a flight with ZERO entertainment.

Would not mind paying the extra fare if the PIA had SOME on board entertainment, I do love the direct flight but remembering the last miserable flight of staring at the ceiling for 8 hours made me select Emirates.

Even with higher fares PIA loses 3.5 billion a month.

Maybe they need to charge 100% then other airlines, after all its the shortest flight between point A and point B.

Well this is a very one-sided view. First of all not everyone is interested in an entertainment system onboard. Now a days people have personal devices, big enough to watch movies, read and do other stuff. On a plane, maybe 50% of PAX is actually taking advantage of IFE. To assume people make selection of carrier based on IFE is false IMO.

Lastly, selection of airline is down to many factors other than IFE.

[Abbas Ali]

To be competitive and among top-ranked airlines these days, modern & working IFE is part of essential services that have to be provided especially aboard long-haul flights.

An airline can keep its long-haul aircraft without IFE if it's not interested in joining the list of top-rated full service airlines.

PIA was the first airline to show in-flight movies on international routes. So, it's sad to see frequent complaints against the absence of IFE aboard long-haul flights of the same airline that was among aviation industry's trend setters in the past.

Abbas

[JayeHussain]

Just booked two tickets for April 2nd to London.

Emirates was 91,000 while PIA was 107,000.

Which idiot will pay 18% more and travel on a flight with ZERO entertainment.

Would not mind paying the extra fare if the PIA had SOME on board entertainment, I do love the direct flight but remembering the last miserable flight of staring at the ceiling for 8 hours made me select Emirates.

Even with higher fares PIA loses 3.5 billion a month.

Maybe they need to charge 100% then other airlines, after all its the shortest flight between point A and point B.

Well this is a very one-sided view. First of all not everyone is interested in an entertainment system onboard. Now a days people have personal devices, big enough to watch movies, read and do other stuff. On a plane, maybe 50% of PAX is actually taking advantage of IFE. To assume people make selection of carrier based on IFE is false IMO.

Lastly, selection of airline is down to many factors other than IFE.

Definitely agree. IFE or lack of it is not everyone's first choice when it comes to selecting an airline for travel. Lots of factors are taken into consideration such as baggage, convenience, timings etc. PIA definitely increases its fares during the holiday periods but they are not alone - I think that is standard practice with all airlines. I recently travelled to Hurgadha, the choice was either Thomas Cook - a direct flight from the UK onboard a cramped 757-300 with small overhead monitors, where the total flight cost was £445 pp including a meal & a bag (20kg) or with Turkish Airlines (MAN-IST-HRG & vv) with an average 4 hour stop each way in IST which included a 30kg luggage allowance, meals & IFE for £360. I went with the £445 purely for the sake of convenience and flight timings, yet, travelling with THY was A. Cheaper, B. I could have gotten myself air miles, and, C. A far superior hard product, but the party I was travelling with simply wanted to get to the destination in the quickest possible way hence TCX was chosen. On the other hand I have just returned from a MCT-ISB-MAN trip on PIA, yes the lack of IFE was present, but, I had an absolutely fabulous crew (on both flights), on time departures and for a decent price. The best thing was the convenience of getting from Pakistan to Manchester within 7 hours 40 mins. It really adds up when you add the travelling time before & after the flight. In comparison I flew MAN-MCT direct with Oman Air, they had a pretty decent hard product but their customer service (or lack of it) is enough to sway me from travelling with them again.

[faisal-777]

IFE is a welcome product, but it is not something that would be top of list in the reason to choose an airline. Let the era of cheap and fast wifi onboard planes come, IFE would be dead. For majority of passengers in Pakistan as well as across the world, the fare and safety is the prime reason to fly an airline. Next reasons would be connection time (if there's a transit), seating, luggage allowance etc. Last time I had a medium haul flight with Air Berlin, there was no IFE but still the plane was jampacked without any seat. Pretty straight forward reason: it was cheaper option. On the same route, I have also flown Qatar (so called 5-star airline), and on 3 occasions, I saw almost 30-50% plane empty, even with a good IFE and lots of multi cultural content available.

And looking at the PIA fare vs Emirates, 18% seems pretty normal amount one would pay more for a direct flight than with a connection. Transit is never a comfortable time even at the best airports. Ultimately you might end up spending some more money than anticipated for eating, water etc during transit. While everyone has their own financial situation and preferences, I wouldn't mind paying upto 10k for a flight that is direct than one that has a connection.

[Mansoor Mela]

ME3 are dumping capacity. Dumping is good for consumer of the target country but not its industry. Thats why there are anti dumping laws for goods. Slould be same for services ss well.

[bnm]

ME airlines has some edges over PIA

1- Low fuel cost
2- Strong financial backup, which is essential for up to date the product and charming marketing campaigns
3- Base countries have strong tourist and business attractions
4- stable envoirment of base countries
5- although they have 30-40% empty seats in most of flights but you can see their tale on every airport, a pretty good marketing message
6- No domestic routes so they have very clear international vision.
7- No visa or routes hurdles such as PIA facing for USA

[Mansoor Mela]

Agree with most points above. Plus different business models. PIA is a 3rd-4th freedom ( to and from home country) airline whereas ME3 are 6th freedom (transit thru home country) airlines. 3rd 4th carriers only cater to their own expats and to a lesser degree their own citizens travelling abroad whereas 6th freedom airlines dont have a huge home base traffic and are basically International service providers.
The 3rd and 4th freedom traffic is seasonal and tidal in nature as it coincides with holiday season abroad and at home. The 6th freedom carriers can still achieve reasonable load factors in off peak months as they are not dependent on single markets.
That is why you have to limit their access to your key markets as their home bases offer very little nusiness to us.