Sabotage of Chitral air service -letter

This is with reference to the letter-- “PIA staff failing PIA” of May 30th, 2007. My personal experience in this regard confirms the concern raised by Sher Wali Khan Aseer in his letter to ChitralNews.

  I phoned PIA universal access number and requested for seats on June 5th, flight to Chitral but I was told that there is not even a single seat available till July 2nd . I then went to a travel agent and asked for tickets on request (chance). It was difficult to find seats on chance even, I was however, lucky to have three tickets on request (chance). On June 5th morning I took my family members to the airport and all three of them plus an infant who had to travel, got a chance on the flight. The flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Chitral and when the passengers came out of the lounge I found that in fact there were only 13 passengers traveling on that flight and only 7 of them were holding confirm tickets while the rest were on request including 4 of my family members. I then asked the PIA staff members at Islamabad Airport what was the logic behind denying tickets to travelers on this flight but they had no answer and maintained a meaningful silence.

As a matter of fact it seems that there is  really a conspiracy working against this new development which is trying to prove this flight to be a financial burden on PIA and justify it to be worthless.

 In view of the importance of this flight and its future existence, I would like to request the District Government Chitral and the elected representatives of Chitral in the National and Provincial Assemblies to take it seriously and talk to the competent authorities of PIA before it is too late. The reason, I am requesting the local, provincial and national level elected representatives at this stage, is that this is their moral duty as leaders to fulfill and protect the rights of the people of Chitral.

Ehsan-ul-Haq

Phone: +92-51-8255714