Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has decided to suspend its bi-weekly flights between Karachi and Mumbai from Tuesday owing to “commercial considerations”.
Currently, the PIA operates two flights in a week — on Mondays and Tuesdays — between Karachi and Mumbai.
However, PIA will continue to operate flights between lahore and Delhi, considering that the traffic volume on this route is satisfactory.
Confirming the suspension of flights between Karachi and Mumbai from Tuesday, PIA’s country manager Muhammad Ahmed Barakzai told “The Pioneer” on Sunday: “We will be suspending operation of flights between Karachi and Mumbai from Tuesday. later in the coming week, we will take a final call on whether to restart the flights or keep the operation of flights suspended for a longer time".
“We will operate the flights scheduled for Monday. There won’t flights between Karachi and Mumbai from Tuesday until further notice. As of today, we have stopped ticket bookings from Tuesday,” Barakzai said.
Barakzai attributed the cancellation of bi-weekly flights between Karachi and Mumbai to the very poor passenger load. “The passenger load on the Mumbai-Karachi sector is very low. For instance, we have mere 18 to 20 passengers on Karachi-Mumbai flight. The reason for low passenger load is that there is some strain in the relations between India and Pakistan,” Barakzai said.
According to Barakzai, PIA has been incurring losses on the Karachi-Mumbai route for the past several months, a reason that has prompted the airline to suspend the services on this route from Tuesday.
Another reason that PIA is attributing to its decision to suspend the Karachi-Mumbai flights is that the airline, which has taken four aircraft from a Turkish company on a wet lease, would soon have to return the leased aircraft.
The PIA has been incurring huge losses in recent years. So much so that the PIA management had told a Senate Committee in Pakistan January this year that the airline had accumulated liabilities of over Rs300 billion and an additional loss of over Rs5.6bn is being added to this amount every month.
The PIA earned round Rs7.5 billion a month while its expenses were over Rs13.14 billion, the airline management informed the Senate Committee.