Shortage of fuel clips PIA wings.

KARACHI -- The national flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), remained grounded on Sunday after it cancelled 43 international and 29 domestic flights because of unavailability of fuel for the aircraft, PIA sources said.

The PIA takes fuel from the Pakistan State Oil (PSO). However, during the past few weeks both these public sector utilities remained at odds over the supplies. According to the sources, the situation become serious as the PIA's air operations came to a standstill.

The flights cancellation had been a problem for the PIA for past few days, but the number rise abnormally high on Sunday. Also for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, it was witnessed that flight crew reported for duty but the planes remained grounded.

'A total of 72 domestic and foreign flights were affected. In just one day, the national airline sustained a loss of Rs700 million due to inoperability of its flights,' a source told The Express Tribune. He added that the lack of contacts between the top managements of the PIA and the PSO was also witnessed.

The current payment dispute between the PIA and the PSO emanated from a recent decision of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) that assured the airline of payment of Rs1.8 billion for the revival of its frozen accounts. However, the airlines management could not benefit from the facility.

Later a standard operating procedure (SOP) was agreed under which, the PIA would pay to the PSO in advance on a daily basis for the fuel. Accordingly, the PIA paid Rs100 million on Monday, Rs125 million on Tuesday, Rs150 million on Wednesday, Rs155 million on Thursday and Rs220 million on Friday.

On Sunday, a tense situation arose over the fuel payments after the PIA consumed it daily limit. The sources said that from Saturday night to Sunday morning, PIA operated four flights. It bought fuel worth Rs40 million for Toronto flight, Rs20 million for Beijing and Rs30 million for Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur.

The PIA administration had paid Rs220 million to the PSO on Friday for its operation over one and a half days. However, the credit limit available to the national flag carrier was too little, which led to a crisis-like situation, the sources said.

From that credit limit, the PIA operated four flights from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan airports to Jeddah and Riyadh, taking fuel worth Rs80-90 million. This raised the total number of PIA flights taking off for different destinations on Sunday to nine.

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