The Maldives Route

[Amaad Lone]

The Maldives is a high yield exotic holiday destination.

The passengers heading towards the Maldives is growing by the day, and dozens of European charter airlines are minting money. Besides most European airlines, Srilankan and Emirates are also flying to cater for the high demand.

In the early 1990s PIA use to fly twice a week A300 on the Karachi-Male-Colombo-Karachi route, but was discontinued.

Why is PIA ignoring such a high traffic destination, only 3 hours from Karachi?

By coordinating European arrivals with the Male departure PIA can significantly improve its loads even on the European sector, allowing PIA to improve frequencies on the European front.

As for the state of the Karachi airport, well I have seen european passengers transiting at Colombo airport, which is nothing compared to Jinnah International Airport

Amaad

[CoyBoy]

PIA would be competeing against Qatar and Kuwait Airways as well besides EK and UL, maybe despite all their follies they still know better than us what works and what doesnt.

[B777240ER]

With some reasjusting of the timetable it could work.

No one will want to travel AMS-FCO-LHE-KHI and then transit to MLE

[Amaad Lone]

To revive the Male route, PIA will need change its European route network.

Large number of Europeans take a long 10 hour flight to Male from most European destinations.

If PIA wants to cash in on these passengers, it would have to provide these passengers direct 7 hour flights into Karachi, and a 3 hour hop to Male or Colombo. And obviously offer lower fares compared to European airlines to pull in the price conscious travelers.

Even Colombo is hot tourist destinations, and PIA can jointly promote the two destinations.

Every single PIA european destination will benifit should PIA re-launch its flights to the Maldives.

Amaad Lone