PIA has no plan to shrink its network

KARACHI: PIA has no plans to shrink its network purposely `as falsely reported in a section of media', the spokesman of the national flag carrier, said in a statement on Monday.

He was of the view that `the news is not only misleading creating a wrong perception but also aimed at damaging the image of the airline affecting its sales'.

The spokesman of PIA said that as per modern airlines industry practice new routes are added and others are suspended based on their performance.

Similarly, from time to time PIA has been adding new stations along with rationalizing and re-structuring its poor performing routes.

The 2018 operating plan has been developed and is based around the core idea of becoming economically viable, the spokesman claimed.

He said that 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.

PIA would also expand to new potential routes with relatively lesser fleet with higher planned utilization of existing fleet. It will 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 it's clear goal of revenue optimization with a lower cost base. This will have a positive impact on operating profit and losses.

It is a well thought through revenue maximization and cost efficient strategy. The last quarter of 2017 has witnessed improvement in all business KPI's is demonstrating that PIA is moving in the right direction, the PIA spokesman concluded.