Wednesday, August 06, 2008
By Saad Hasan

KARACHI: Sharjah authorities have withheld permission for private airline Airblue to operate scheduled flights from Pakistan to the state, just days before the launch of the service on August 14.

The decision has been taken to pressurise the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Pakistan to allow more flights to Sharjah’s national carrier Air Arabia, industry officials told The News on Tuesday.

“We had over 1,000 passengers booked and ticketed,” a dejected Airblue official said. “Besides financial losses, this episode will badly affect our credibility.” Airblue had recently added two Airbus-319 aircraft, which were to be used on routes between northern Pakistan and Sharjah.

Flights have been withheld by General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) of Sharjah on grounds of ‘pending discussion’ with Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), an official close to the negotiation said. “Pending discussion basically implies to Air Arabia’s endeavor to seek more flights to the country,” he added.

Air Arabia presently operates seven flights a week between the two countries, whereas none of the three Pakistani carriers are operating to Sharjah.

The case has brought fore the disadvantageous position of Pakistani airlines, which are losing their own market to Gulf carriers, an aviation expert commented. “They are taking all our passengers to Europe and onwards to US,” he said, adding that in return Pakistani airlines mostly operate on point-to-point basis.

He said CAA should take a hard stand on the issue and stop flights of Air Arabia unless the Sharjah authorities allow Air Blue to start operations.

However, none of the officials of CAA, which has claimed reaching milestones by attracting foreign carriers, were available for comment. Official spokesman had no clue as to what had happened and Director Air Traffic Manzar Jamal did not respond despite repeated attempts to contact him on his personal cellular phone.

Air Blue had also been denied more flights to Dubai. It was supposed to operate 14 weekly flights to Sharjah from Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar and Faisalabad.

Shalini Rajan, Air Arabia’s Regional Manager for Pakistan, said she was out of station and can not comment until next week.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=128346

fking bhindian

The decision has been taken to pressurise the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Pakistan to allow more flights to Sharjah’s national carrier Air Arabia, industry officials told The News on Tuesday.

Air Arabia presently operates seven flights a week between the two countries, whereas none of the three Pakistani carriers are operating to Sharjah.

Although Air Arabia is not the national airline of Sharjah but actually a low cost airline based in Sharjah. However, Sharjah has been taking such one way decisions all the time ..

Earlier both Pakistani & Indian freehold property owners who had bought houses in Sharjah (like 7 years back) were in for a rude wakening that the contract which they had signed initially for their property were reduced from 99 years to mere 7 years !

Otherwise they had laws for other Arab nationals like Yemeni, Jordanian, Egyptian to buy property in surrounding areas of Sharjah but for Pakistani's we had not exemption .. keeping in mind of the amount of input Pakistani's have given since last 35 years .. this should not be the case ..

I saw GOP after it's bickering amongst itself should take this matter heavily !

QUOTE
Shalini Rajan, Air Arabia’s Regional Manager for Pakistan, said she was out of station and can not comment until next week.



fking bhindian

Goes on to prove how dhilay we are in allowing an Indian national to represent Air Arabia in Pakistan, will a multi-national company be allowed to post a Pakistani in India ?

What do you expect when you have the following list:

1. Sanjay Jha CEO Motorola
2. Indra Nooyi- CEO PepsiCo
3. Vikram Pandit CEO Citigroup
4. Shantanu Narayen CEO Adobe Systems
5. Jai Nagarkatti CEO Sigma-Aldrich

Bro, seriously it is time that we heavily invest in our education system. Else we will be eaten live by these low-lying bhangees. The list that I gave is just from the top of my head all these companies are fortune 500.

What do you expect when you have the following list:

1. Sanjay Jha CEO Motorola
2. Indra Nooyi- CEO PepsiCo
3. Vikram Pandit CEO Citigroup
4. Shantanu Narayen CEO Adobe Systems
5. Jai Nagarkatti CEO Sigma-Aldrich

Bro, seriously it is time that we heavily invest in our education system. Else we will be eaten live by these low-lying bhangees. The list that I gave is just from the top of my head all these companies are fortune 500.

Zionist : You are talking about foreign companies with foreign CEO's in foreign land.. that's a later story .. I am talking about international companies having offices in Pakistan but still having an Indian as a manager !

What can we do about it? Tell the foreign companies we want their business, but we have a veto over who runs their their business here? They'll send whoever they deem fit. I don't see the companies making changes to suit our ego.

Must bhai, I understand what you are saying. But, my point was; if you have all these guys in Fortune 500, then it is normal to have them in any company in any country. I hope this makes myself more clear. As far as having an Indian working in Pakistan is concerned it makes no difference as the company can be in Dubai and the manager for Pakistan can still be an Indian. And if you don't want to have them controlling the top positions, then produce more Engineers and Management graduates and the equation will be balanced.

Must bhai, I understand what you are saying. But, my point was; if you have all these guys in Fortune 500, then it is normal to have them in any company in any country. I hope this makes myself more clear

Bro : Got your point, which is quite valid. Thanks for the elaboration.