Employees per aircraft provide one measure of an airlines efficiency with respect to the average number of all its employees per unit of production. The smaller the number of employees per aircraft indicates greater efficiency.
Generally speaking , an adjustment for average aircraft size would also be relevant when analyzing the number of ground employees an airline employs per aircraft.
Worst performers are Syrian airlines and Pakistan International Airline (PIA) with worst ratio running in multiple of hundreds while airlines like Ryanair are maintaining the ratio around 30.
If we focus on Pakistan International Airline (PIA), we can observe that, the flag bearer is facing variety of issues and the highlight is employee per aircraft ratio, the primary reason for the dried up revenue from several years.
Pandemic is one issue that’s affecting airlines globally , but other reasons that’s killing the profitability of PIA are poor management, political interference, exploit the resources and corruption,those are either very less or non-existant in the airlines, those make profit.
Banning by EASA (European Aviation regulator) is also pinching PIA big time apart from punching a hole in it’s reputation.
The fake degree case confessed by Pakistani aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan in the assembly was taken up seriously around the world, to which even ICAO ( International Civil Aviation Organization) took a note, advising its staff to avoid flying PIA.
The South asian country also faces a wide spread corruption and scandals involving Aircraft purchases , that’s killing competitiveness of the airline to give a match to international airlines.
Talking of the passenger services, its not exemplary, when compared to its rivals or what world expects, improper service and mismanagement has curtailed the scope of PIA.
Political interference in PIA has introduced liability in terms of incompetent personnel and overstaffing, which hampered the expected production, profitability and reputation.
Poor Governance also adds to the misery, where management and labour union relations hamper the airline, and Government bail out remains the only option to keep it floating.
Discouraging performance, specifically in this pandemic can not run a successful airline, as revenue sources are limited and airlines around the world are doing every bit, starting from cost cutting efforts, to Freighter segment venture to staff lay offs to remain competitive.
An internal surgery of the airline is very much call of the time to fight against the staff overburden ( aircraft employee ratio), mismanagement and corruption political interference, corruption and poor governance.
Atleast quick implementation of currently announced “Good PIA” and “ Bad PIA” measures can help saving the Pakistani national carrier from complete collapse.
Read more on Good PIA and Bad PIA......
