KARACHI: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has claimed that it has come out of losses at the operational level after quite a long time as its revenues slightly exceeded the operating cost in the quarter ended on March 31 last.
"PIA has achieved breakeven at the operational level," Adviser to PIA CEO Air Vice Marshal Noor Abbas told The Express Tribune. "It, however, may take three to four years to report a net profit."
The state-owned airline's revenue surged to an average of Rs8-8.5 billion a month in the January-March 2019 quarter compared to around Rs7 billion a month in the same period of last year. "The operating cost was slightly lower than the monthly revenue or was almost equal," he said.
The adviser said a notable improvement in financial management came after the seat occupancy rate per flight increased to around 90 per cent in the period under review compared to less than 70 per cent in the corresponding period of previous year.
Moreover, the addition of four planes to the operational fleet after repair, which took more than a year, reduction in the number of employees, drastic reduction in the ticket reservation cost, increased load factor of cargo and increase in the number of flights on profit-making routes helped achieve these results.
"Such improvement in operations came following the change of management in November 2018 when Air Marshal Arshad Malik took charge as CEO of the airline," he said. "PIA is doing well under the five-year business plan, which got approval of the cabinet very recently."
He revealed that PIA had been saving roughly Rs1 billion a month since it acquired the new ticket reservation software from Turkey-based firm Hitit in October 2018. "The new reservation software is costing half of what PIA was paying to the US-based firm Saber."
"The saving is playing a major role in turning around the airline," he said.
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