The public airline Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), banned for more than four years from European skies, resumed its flights to Europe on Friday January 10, with a flight to Paris. A plane from the Pakistani company took off at around 12:40 p.m. (local time) from Islamabad airport, once again becoming the only airline to operate flights between Pakistan and the European Union.
Authorization to access European and British airspace was suspended in May 2020, a month after the crash of a company Airbus in the country’s largest city, Karachi (South), which left 97 dead. Human errors by pilots and air traffic control were to blame for the crash, which led Islamabad to admit that around 150 pilots had fake licenses or obtained them by cheating in exams.
In November, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency announced it had lifted the ban. France is for the moment the only destination announced by the carrier, still banned from flying to the United Kingdom and the United States. At the time, the agency announced that it had “restored sufficient confidence” in the capabilities of the Pakistani civil aviation authorities.
Deemed oversized and poorly managed, PIA, which employs 7,000 people, had been in turmoil for years because its state funds dried up as Pakistan’s budget sank. For months, Pakistani authorities had been announcing an imminent privatization for the debt-ridden airline, which collapsed in November when a buyer offered only a fraction of the original price. The government hopes that the reopening of European destinations will improve its purchasing potential.
PIA has posted losses of $270 million in 2023, according to local media, and its debts reach almost $3 billion, or nearly five times the value of its assets. The same year, it canceled dozens of domestic and international flights due to lack of means to pay its kerosene bills.
