There was a time when Pakistan International Airlines was a source of national pride. Its aircraft carried the country’s flag across continents, its service was admired, and its technical facilities were regarded as state-of-the-art. Today, PIA stands as a case study in institutional collapse driven not merely by financial mismanagement, but by structural rigidity and cultural stagnation.
I spent years working with a company that provided technical support to PIA. What I witnessed was not simply an airline burdened by debt, but an organisation trapped in its own past. PIA had built an impressive in-house maintenance ecosystem: an engine overhaul shop capable of handling dozens of wide-body engines annually; component, pneumatic, landing-gear, and instrument shops; and multiple overhaul facilities for aircraft structures and hardware. A fully equipped test bench existed to test wide-body aircraft engines after overhaul.
Following its long-standing philosophy of keeping maintenance in-house, PIA constructed a massive wide-body aircraft hangar—known as the Ispahani Hangar capable of performing all categories of heavy aircraft checks. With this addition, the airline operated three major maintenance hangars: the Fokker Hangar, the Block Hangar, and the Ispahani Hangar. Combined with its engine overhaul shop, this gave PIA one of the most comprehensive technical infrastructures in the region, allowing it, at least in theory, to keep its fleet operational without major delays or flight cancellations.
Yet despite this formidable physical capacity, PIA continued to send some engine work abroad. Six A310 aircraft equipped with CF6-80C2 engines and two Boeing 747s powered by Rolls-Royce RB211 engines were overhauled overseas because PIA lacked the specialised tooling and the required FAA certifications to perform these tasks locally. Even the test bench needed upgrading before overhauled engines could be properly tested and cleared for service.
Instead of recognising that an airline can operate a fleet efficiently while outsourcing selected heavy maintenance, PIA management clung to the belief that everything had to be done in-house. Large facilities were therefore retained not because they were economically justified, but because they preserved jobs and made day-to-day operations administratively easier, even when external servicing would have been more rational and cost-effective.
These facilities once formed the backbone of PIA’s technical strength. But as the fleet transitioned to newer aircraft, particularly the Boeing 777, and older platforms such as the A310, Boeing 747, and 737 approached obsolescence, the airline failed to anticipate and manage the consequences of this shift. Instead of planning rationally for fleet redundancy, PIA pursued GE Aircraft Engines (USA), the manufacturer of engines fitted on the A310 and Boeing 777, to upgrade its engine test bench to higher thrust levels.
Under an offset programme linked to the Boeing 777 purchase, GE held funds earmarked for such requests. GE proposed an upgrade costing approximately $8 million, suitable for the A310’s CF6-80C2 engines. PIA management, however, insisted on making the test bench compatible with the Boeing 777’s GE90 engines, a proposal that, according to GE, would have required nearly double the investment.
The privatisation of PIA, rather than signalling reform, risks becoming an admission of the state’s inability to run complex organisations effectively
Beyond the higher cost, the proposal made little operational sense. The GE90 engines required only around four shop visits annually, rendering such an investment commercially unjustifiable. GE ultimately declined the request and proceeded with upgrading the test bench for the CF6-80C2. To further support PIA’s Engine Overhaul Shop, where these engines had previously been sent abroad for repair, GE supplied overhaul tooling worth roughly $2.5 million.
At the time, PIA leadership was confident it could attract foreign business to its engine overhaul and wide-body maintenance facilities. That ambition largely failed. Aside from a handful of marginal operators, no significant foreign customers materialised. Within a few years, the A310 fleet was phased out, followed by the Boeing 737. The result was predictable: infrastructure designed for a retired fleet became obsolete.
Instead of adapting, PIA carried the burden of idle facilities paying rent to the Civil Aviation Authority and retaining surplus staff for work that no longer existed. This partly explains why PIA’s workforce-to-aircraft ratio ballooned far beyond international norms. What had once been a strategic asset turned into a structural liability.
As financial pressures intensified, particularly from the early 2020s onward, a culture of blame took hold. Administration accused engineering of consuming excessive resources; engineering blamed administration for corruption and mismanagement. Yet no serious statistical or financial analysis was ever undertaken to identify which functions were draining resources and which contributed to sustainability or growth.
The problem was not only technical. It was cultural. Throughout my time there, I never saw management engage meaningfully with workers, no shared goals, no consultations, no seminars, no workshops, no forums for innovation. The airline operated as if inherited practices were sufficient, even as global aviation evolved rapidly. Employees remained disconnected from strategy, managers were indifferent to adaptation, and work processes were largely unmonitored despite mounting losses. Those who questioned this inertia or attempted reform often became targets rather than contributors. In such an environment, even genuine opportunities for change were squandered.
PIA’s trajectory is not unique. Pakistan Steel Mills, once a symbol of industrial ambition, lies dormant because its furnaces were never modernised. Pakistan Railways continues to maintain expansive workshops and bloated staffing even as passengers migrate to road transport. The Pakistan National Shipping Corporation failed to keep pace with containerisation and modern logistics. These public-sector enterprises share the same DNA: outdated infrastructure, politicised management, and a culture resistant to change.
And yet, a paradox remains. While many civilian public industries decay, Pakistan’s defence industry has demonstrated resilience and growth, securing major export contracts and sustaining technological relevance. The difference does not lie in nationality—both sectors are staffed by Pakistanis, but in organisational culture. Defence enterprises operate with discipline, clearer accountability, merit-based progression, and long-term strategic planning. They invest in research and development, align infrastructure with evolving technology, and measure performance rigorously. In short, they adapt.
Beyond aviation, the story of PIA mirrors the country’s broader condition, where public administration repeatedly fails to perform even its most basic functions. Rampant corruption, chronic mismanagement, resistance to change, and a pervasive lack of institutional motivation have become defining features of the state. Pakistan Railways, for instance, now carries a pension liability exceeding its operational revenue, effectively transforming it into a pension-disbursement body rather than a transport service.
Circular debt in the energy sector accumulates in much the same way as PIA’s redundant workshops did, absorbing resources without generating commensurate value. In each case, liabilities compound unchecked while reform is deferred through bureaucratic inertia and political avoidance. These failures are not isolated accidents; they are symptoms of a governance model that prioritises short-term survival over long-term viability.
The privatisation of PIA, rather than signalling reform, risks becoming an admission of the state’s inability to run complex organisations effectively. Offloading a failing enterprise may ease the immediate fiscal burden, but it also allows civil administration to avoid confronting the deeper structural weaknesses that produced the failure in the first place. Letting go of the past is easier than undertaking the difficult work of institutional renewal; yet the moment demands precisely that, facing new challenges and introducing reforms that can restore performance, credibility, and purpose across public administration.
Unless Pakistan reforms the incentive structures and accountability mechanisms governing its civilian public sector, PIA will remain more than an isolated failure. It will stand as a recurring template replicated across railways, steel, shipping, and energy of how national pride decays when institutions stop learning, adapting, and holding themselves to account.