Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has started to build maintenance hubs at Islamabad and Lahore in addition to its base at Karachi in order to extend aircraft maintenance network.
Addition of maintenance hubs will allow the national flag carrier to improve the maintenance and reliability standards of its aircraft and will add flexibility and profitability to its maintenance and flight schedule, a senior official of PIA said on Wednesday.
The PIA Engineering and Maintenance Department has an extensive repair and maintenance facility for its aircraft at Karachi. Now it plans to extend the maintenance facilities at Lahore and Islamabad further to perform major checks of all aircraft in its fleet and also offer services to third party customers to generate additional revenue for the Airline, he said.
It may be mentioned here that PIA's fleet consists of 38 aircraft, out of which 29 were in operation. Currently, 13 planes have been grounded for the maintenance checks and five aircraft will shortly be operational. Some aircraft have been permanently grounded keeping in view the structural/corrosion issues and high cost of recovery.
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