PIA plans to operate six flights a week from China in 2007

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mohammad abdulaziz
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PIA plans to operate six flights a week from China in 2007

Post by mohammad abdulaziz »

Monday, 26 February 2007

BEIJING, Feb 26 (APP): The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has set a target of at least four flights a week from Beijing and examining the possibility to launch two flights a week from Shanghai during the current year as the inaugural Islamabad-Beijing-Islamabad sector flight will leave federal capital on March 6.

The inaugural flight, which was previously schedule to take off from Islamabad on February 27 was postponed due to week-long Chinese New Year holidays.

The Country Manager, PIA Syed Ishaq Hussain while talking to APP here said that the Islamabad-Beijing-Islamabad would be the third flight of the national carrier in a week, as it is already operating two flights on Karachi-Islamabad-Beijing-Tokyo route.

He said that this flight will be very beneficial for the business community, officials as well as for tourists, as Pakistan is celebrating “2007- Destination Pakistan” for the promotion of tourism in the country.

The new flight, he said will take-off on Tuesday night from Islamabad and land here on 0720 hrs on Wednesday and will depart at 0830 hrs the same day.

To a question, Ishaq Hussain said that he just returned from his Head office after attending the 2-day 4th Global Marketing Conference, which was inaugurated by PIA chairman Tariq Kirmani The Conference has set a target of Rs 74 billion to be achieved by the station heads of the airline in 2007, while the target for seat factor is 76%.

Syed Ishaq Hussain said that at present the airline has focused China as it is a rapid growing economy and emerging market and lot of economic activities are taking place and the world is focusing on China so PIA wants to tap these opportunities.

He said that the PIA Chairman Tariq Kirmani has directed to expand the PIA Operations for China and we are also working to introduce two flights from Shanghai and add one more from Beijing.

He said that these steps would be a source of convenient for the travelling people and also promote our tourism.

The country manager said that we want to carry maximum number of Chinese tourists not only to our country but also plan to divert those who intend to tour the countries located in the region to travel on PIA.

In this connection, he said that PIA is working on a very lucrative package for those tourists who wish to visit adjoining countries that including two-day free of cost stay in Islamabad and Lahore and visit to various tourists interest spots in both the cities before taking PIA flight for their next destination.

These steps, he said would help increase the number of people to travel on PIA, which would promote tourism and project soft image of Pakistan.

He said that he had a meeting here recently with the tour operators and also got some tourist groups destined for Khatmandu that would travel via Pakistan.

The national carrier will provide hospitality to these groups that included free stay in Islamabad and Karachi where they would also visit various prominent tourist spots before flying to Khatmandu.

He expressed the hope that by introducing diverse promotional strategy we would be able to excel our performance and also thanked the Chairman PIA for reposing full confidence in him for projecting positive image of the country.

Source: http://www.app.com.pk/
FMC
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Post by FMC »

What is the guarantee that CAAC does not follow suit. What equipment will be put into service?