Differences between PIA and PALPA mounting

KARACHI-The PIA management has called in nine general managers, who are pilots, to manage the
cancellation and delay of domestic and international flights due to the standoff with PALPA, sources told The
Nation on Monday.
The sources in PIA told that so far around 36 pilots of PALPA have refused to fly the airplanes at the eleventh
hour due to which passengers are facing hardships, therefore, PIA has called their nine general managers to
cope with the problem.
The nine managers are said to have been promoted as general managers a year ago, and all of them are pilots.
The spokesman of PIA, when contacted, told The Nation that general managers Flying Operation Captain Shuja
Naqvi, General Manager scheduling Captain Haroon, Captain Naveed Ahmed, Captain Saleem Ahmed and
some others have been called by PIA on emergency basis as some of the pilots refused to fly airplanes at the
eleventh hour.
He said that one domestic flight Islamabad to Skardu and one international flight Islamabad to Kabul were
postponed on Monday due to the refusal of PALPA pilots.
The deadlock between PIA management and PALPA continued on Monday, and the process of overture could
not be started so far to resolve the differences between them.
He mentioned that MD PIA had already said that he was ready to talk to PALPA to resolve the issue and the
doors of PIA management were open to PALPA members to settle the matters.
Joint secretary PALPA Sohail Ahmed told that the PIA management had not contacted them and confirmed that
PALPA members were not on strike.
He said that the pilots had refused to go on flight operations as their schedule did not allow them to have even a
little bit of rest.
He said that such was the case with the pilots since last year which resulted in this stand to make the PIA
management aware of their tough schedule and also to implement the annulled Work Agreement immediately.
He said that when PALPA members got tired in the end and refused to put the lives of passengers at risk
keeping their responsibility in consideration, the PIA management has switched off the computer networking
system (Aims) of all PALPA members.
The computer networking system is to inform the pilots and crew members of PIA about their flight schedules
and timings, and other necessary information to timely update them.